“A HIGH HAND”

Greymouth Evening Star, 10 February 1947, Page 5

“A HIGH HAND”

AMERICAN DISCUSSES. NEW ZEALAND LABOUR REFORMS AND PROBLEMS NEW YORK, February 7. In the first number of a monthly magazine “United Nations World,” Marc T. Greene, the American journalist, in a survey entitled “New Zealand Advances Under Labour,” says that Labour, to which New Zealand turned in desperation, corrected the state of disrepute to which democracy had fallen in New Zealand. Referring to various benefits introduced by Labour and discussing housing, Mr. Greene says that each house is different in design, with modern sanitation and electrical conveniences familiar to Americans. “The dreary monotony of the standardised houses characteristic of mbst workers’ dwellings in other countries and evident in New Zealand a generation ago, has now disappeared entirely,” he says. “The Dominion worker is housed as not even in the United States, while his Government sees to it that he never becomes indigent.” Mr. Greene adds: “The continued tenure of the Labour Government over an indefinite periqd would seem to depend on its consideration of the rights and welfare of all the people. He contends that the Labour Government has alienated several sections and that the Government at present lacks a safe working majority. Mr. Greene contends that this is the result of permitting, and even sometimes encouraging, the worker to carry on with a high hand, aggressively and militantly overriding and disregarding in many ways not only the comfort and welfare of the community but the stability of the nation itself. “One deplorable evidence of this is that New Zealand’s currency is either entirely unacceptable abroad, or is subject to large discounts,” he says. “This signifies a lack of confidence abroad in the New Zealand Labour Government. The failure of the Government to put its house in order will ultimately mean the loss of another golden opportunity to make reform, liberal government, and true democracy, a success. Everything will be lost and the loss to Liberalism generally will be great if New Zealand is permitted to become a paradise for the worker and something quite the contrary for the rest of the population.”