LABOR RALLY

Gisborne Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 11495, 24 November 1931, Page 5

LABOR RALLY

AIR HOLLAND HAS ENTHUSIASTIC AIEETING AT PALMERSTON NORTH ATTACK ON PRIAIE AtINISTER -. t . i (Press Association.* PALMERSTON N., Nov. 23. Air Holland, the Labor loader, spoke at tho Opera llouso which was crowdod to overflowing, with a largo audience in the stroot listening per the loud speaker system to-night Undoubtedly it was tho most enthusiastic Labor meeting ever held in Palmerston North.

Air Holland said that Air Forbes was appealing to the peoplo to purchase New Zealand goods, but his government had been busy importing both railway sleepers and coal from overseas, while their own sleeper getters and coalminers were standing idle. Air Forbes now said that the coal had been ordered from Australia by his Government as a standby against action by tho. miners. That statement was a flat contradiction of tho Primo Alinister’s reply to himself, when the imported coal was being ordered. At that time Mr Forbes telegraphed that only a small quantity of coal was being brought from Australia and that it wns lining obtained for storago in the open air depots. An opposite announcement was mado at the same timo by Air Veitch, then Minister for Railways, who declared that tho coal was being imported hccauso it conld not bo produced from tho mines of tho Dominion. Mr Forbes’ latest explanation was an emphatic contradiction of what Air Yeitch had said. Another misstatement •' by the Primo Afinistor to his Dunedin nndieneo was “that he (Air Holland), had said that tho speech mado by Air Coates fit Dargaville had been broadcast. Ho had mado no reference whatever to Mr Coates’s Dargavillo speech. What ho had said was that from Wellington, sometime previously, Air Coates had broadcast a statement of Government policy in relation to unemployment and that the speech so broadcast contained no ray of hope for tho betterment of the position of tlio unemployed. As to Air Forties’s repetition of his assertion that ho put th(4 matter of forming a National Government before tho Leader of the Labor party, ho now wished to invite- Air Forbes to make available for inspection his files with the communication which ho claimed to have sent and tho reup 'he had claimed he had received. As a matter of fact, po communication had ever beep sent him bv Afr Forbes and, consequently, no rcnlv could have been received by that gntlomnn from himself. A vote of confidence in the Labor nartv was carried amidst cheers.