MR COATES SATISFIED

Evening Star, Issue 22773, 7 October 1937, Page 18

MR COATES SATISFIED

SAT ONE WITH LABOUR'S DEFENCE POLICY , APPRECIATION EXPRESSED [From Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, October. 6. At one stage of a critical speech on the Financial Debate in the House of Representatives to-night, Mr Coates (Kaipara) found himself, as he expressed it, in the same boat with the Government. He congratulated it on its active defence policy, and declared that ho read in the Budget the reference to defence with a tremendous amount of satisfaction. “I wonder,” continued Mr Coates, !“ how many of " our citizens have criticised the men on this side of the House 'because they thought they belonged to a capitalist class •vyhich only had /for its outlook war and war material ? But those citizens to-day have been able to see that the men elected by themselves, representing Labour or Socialist politics, have found themselves in the position of having to ■ay to the.people of this country, ‘We are sorry, but it is essential that we must make provision for defence internally, and if necessary to assistethers to protest th© British Common(wealth of. Nations.’” Mr Richards: Have we ever said anything else? (Opposition laughter.) Mr Coates, addressing the Prime Minister, declared that, he wished to express his appreciation of the attitude of Mr Savage and his colleagues. Many thousands of citizens of the Dominion iwpuld accept from him, as the leader of Labour and Socialist politics, what they never would have accepted from jthe other side of the House. “So to that extent,” added the member for Kaipara, “we find ourselves in the same boat with a clear-cut recognition that it is essential that defence must he provided for.” As for the League of Nations, everyone could subscribe to its ideals, hut it had failed, which was a pity; so that we found ourselves in the position that our ideals might he at stake unless wo ourselves were alive to the fact, and were prepared to defend ourselves •gainst others whose ideals were diametrically opposed to our own. The Opposition was ready to. help the Government in providing a measure of defence.

True, concluded Mr Coates, it was ipnly the initiation, hut it was a beginning.