Grey River Argus and Blackball News MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1922. BANKRUPT POLITICIANS.

Grey River Argus, 3 April 1922, Page 4

Grey River Argus and Blackball News

MONDAY, APRIL 3, 1922. BANKRUPT POLITICIANS.

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do duty for a policy, beyond his party’s strongly-voiced wish to replace the Masseyites on the Treasury benches. There is hardly one class in the Dominion that is not getting quite fed up with Parrs, Nosworthys, Bells, and. other amateur statesmen with whom Mr Massey has surrounded himself in his great capacity for selecting able rulers. The public servants are quite sick of Masseyite maladministration, whether they be the railwaymen, postal servants, teachers or any other branch of the civil service. The highest ideal of the Government seems to be that of running New Zealand as a suburb of London. Reaction and Prussianism is their strong point, and anything savouring of popular liberty is anathema to them. Their financial policy has two corner stones, namely, interest for the Shylocks, and more money for the class who are already wealthy. The prosperity of God’s Own Country is, for them only the fattening of the bank balances of the rich. The Premier thinks in terms of profits, but what has he done since the slump to help anybody except the wealthy few? He is ready with a C.O.D. postal system to facilitate the collection of money in this

country for foreign or outside traders, who send us their surplus, but tire people of New Zealand cannot get such an aid for their business. We are losing at least £2,000,000 a year because of the Government’s failure to handle butter exports properly, as compared with Danish and Irish butter, in the Old Country. All the State services in New Zealand, instead of being extended, have been cut down, and their prices raised. It is useless —even as an election dodge—for the Premier now to go bragging about the quality and quantity of past exports of mutton and butter, because he declares we ’vc got to

sell cheaper, and eat less, if we want to be as prosperous as we were at the time of which he speaks. Ministers are much less concerned with developing the country and giving the masses a square deal, than they are with the uttering of Bismarckian, edicts and threats to each and all against freedom of speech —if possible, thought also would come under the ban —or the

exercise of political and industrial rights by public servants, or the rights of workers generally. There is no desire to see fair play, and the only sort of mass-control the Cabinet wants is

that of the capitalists over the consumers of commodities. Prussianism unrestrained has challenged the public to question the tradition that state servants have no rights. Prussianism, in short, has changed this from a country that once was acclaimed —from outside

—as a leader in progressive legislation, into one where people are asked to acclaim the degradation of popular rights as the ideal of British freedom. Such a regime cannot much longer endure.

New Zealand’s social, political and economic condition to-day is getting to be unprecedentedly bad. The old hands in the game of politics can see no remedy except more hardships for the majority. The Reform slogan is “Live horse till you get grass!” All the new' three-legged Wilforditc Party has to say is, “Put us into office!” Their only other anxiety is to find a name! Labour alone has a definite policy, but Labour’s best friends would hardly feel anxious to undertake the cleaning up process that is necessary after the administrative and economic mess which successive Ministries have made of things during the past decade. We hear Mr Massey running about on a pre-election gallop beseeching his erstwhile farmer backers to hope on until the Old Country gives them a tariff

preference, by taxing foreign imports of foodstuffs. He well knows, of course, that this is all rot, because 'the Old Country is not going to make it any harder for its largely unemployed millions to eke out a precarious existence by sending up the price of their daily bread and butter. The papers called

“Liberal” heretofore —no doubt they will find a new name when the Wilford Party doos —are worse off even than the Tory Press. The latter at least has something intelligible to try and gull the public, with, in the shape of Mr Massey’s empty promises of a change, such as that promised in. the railway policy, from a big bungle into a big vote-catching stunt during the coming months that precede the general election. But the papers that feel like linking up with the party are

anxious to know whether Mr Wilforcl is even going to discover anything to