Mr. Fraser Doubts Financial Policy of National Party

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23092, 3 November 1949, Page 3

Mr. Fraser Doubts Financial Policy of National Party

(P.A.) NEW PLYMOUTH, Nov. 3. “Mr. Holland would not answer the questions and I have a shrewd suspicion that he cannot.” said the Prime Minister, Mr. P. Fraser, at Hawera last night when referring to what he termed the refusal of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. S. G. Holland, to answer the “most elcmentery questions” about the monetary system proposed by the National Party.

It was clear evidence, he said, that it was “only a facade of empty words.” “In not one particular is Mr. Holland able or willing to give the answers which it is necessary for the people to know if they are to understand whether the proposed system will work,” said Mr. Fraser. “There are considerable misgivings about the National Party’s view on the monetary system because of Mr. Holland's ingenious diagnosis of inflation in which the value of services of all kinds, such as retailers’ services, professional services, transport services, education and the services of the armed forces are not taken into account as matters that have to be paid for. “Mr. Holland's apparent lack of understanding of this simple fact makes it all the more necessary that he is not ignorant of where the new monetary system would lead him and the country. The fact that Mr. Holland runs for cover when I ask questions which he should be ready to answer entitles everyone to be suspicious of his policy and to demand an answer. Volume of Money

“A new monetary system is a matter which is so fraught with good or evil for the people and so complex that the country should be left in no doubt that a sound workable mechanism is pronosed. At the moment all that is clear from National Party spokesmen is that tiie volume of money is to be reduced. “A reduction in the money supply spells deflation, no matter what softsounding words the National Party may use. Deflation under the National Party is a thing the people dread. “On all the evidence of the National Party’s financial policy is a policy of deflation, but beyond this there is no evidence that any technique exists, or can exist, to create the new monetary system proposed by the National Party.

“Now we have a new element of confusion in Mr. Clifton Webb’s prediction, made at Brooklyn on Monday, that alleged non-oolitical control of currency and credit by setting up a controller of finance is proposed. The proposed controller will have power which, under the National Party's policy of deflation, would result in permanent damage to the welfare of the people and their jobs, businesses, farms and homes.

“This is the meaning of what the National Party has said so far. If it means anything else let Mr. Holland sav so and answer the questions I have put to him.”