ALMOST STIFLED

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 20826, 3 July 1942, Page 5

ALMOST STIFLED

EFFECTIVE CRITICISM “HYBRID GOVERNMENT" MR. W. D. STEWART’S VIEW (P.A.) DUNEDIN, this day. Mr. W. Downie Stewart, in an interview on the rew War Administration, said: “By the creation o£ a hybrid Government in which a party Cabinet and a non-party Cabinet are run in double harness, the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser, has practically suppressed all effective criticism within the wall of Parliament and now apparently desires to suppress outside criticism. If all criticism is to be regarded as unpatriotic, we are well on the way to the creation of a dictatorship suggestive of a totalitarian State. “If a National Government proved unattainable in New Zealand, it is possible to sympathise with .the Prime Minister who, no doubt, did his best to form one. but if the parties in Parliament abandon the right of criticism that is no reason why the press and public should be gagged.” Mr. Downie Stewart also criticised the decision to postpone the election till a year after .the end of the war, which might be five years, and said there was an element of humour in the Prime Minister’s suggestion that the Governor-General can order an election since Labour claimed that he could do so only if his Prime Minister so advised.