VITAL NECESSITY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21009, 4 February 1943, Page 4

VITAL NECESSITY

STABILISATION PLAN COMPLEX PROBLEMS DEFENCE OF" SUBSIDIES (PA.) CHRISTCHURCH, Feb. 4. Those who said that the Government should have introduced stabilisation two years ago were now seeing the tremendous complexities of any stabilisation scheme, said the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser, in ci by-election address at Christchurch. There was a strange absence of any talk of generating wealth by printing notes. The people realised that it was poods and services which counted and not simply flooding the country with paoer money. ~ “We have not only to fight the wai with all our resources, but we have aUo to win the peace, said Mr. Fraser, “and to see that the social and economic conditions, won after years of struggle in Opposition and after a few brief years of office, are retained for the people. Stabilisation was absolutely necessary, and part of it is that the price of bread, butter, cheese, sugar, tea, coal >:md electricity, and other commodities in the workers home will continue to be kept down to a minimum. . . “Some say wc are doing that by subsidy. So we are. We are paying out thousands in subsidy. It is better that the State and the people collectively should pay the subsidies cause we are contributing according to our ability, rather than that the burden should fall on the children of the poor and that poor people should be ground still lower. That is oui justification for the subsidies.” . Although the National Party said that they would not touch social security, they still believed that a depression would come and that the people would suffer. He would ask the National Party to state their programme and convince the people alte, the last depression that they did not believe in slumps and would prevent I.hem. The frank recognition should be that so long as there was adequate food in the country none should go without. Labour recognised that.