Grey River Argus FRIDAY, December 14, 192& THE UNITED PARTY’S POLICY.

Grey River Argus, 14 December 1928, Page 4

Grey River Argus FRIDAY, December 14, 192& THE UNITED PARTY’S POLICY.

The policy which Sir Joseph Ward yesterday outlined in Parliament, while it provides for an increased outlay upon publicworks, is quite as remarkable for what it omits as it is for what it contains. One of the reasons why greater energy in railway construction is welcome at the present time is the expectation that an immediate result will be some easement of the hardships which unemployment, small earnings, and a high cost of living have imposed upon a very large section of the Dominion population. It had not, however, been anticiuated that those hardships which the Ilriine Minister before the general election, was hot slow to point out, would be left unremedied except in so far as some increase in the available hard manual labour is calculated to afford relief for them. There are, as pointed out in the House last evening by the Member for Westland, the needs of the aged, the orphaned, the widowed, and the sick and disabled to consider, and these evidently have so far been ignored in the legislative programme of the new Administration, whilst the starvation wage, rates are to be remedied only in the case of those unemployed to be engaged on public works in the country areas. The city unemployed, so far as the State is concerned, are to be left no better off than they were in the matter of relief rates, which is scarcely a fair method of inducing them to go into the country. There is nothing yet announced in the United policy to afford openings for new settlers, but if closer settlement is to be fostered, the suggestion of the Prime Minister prior to the election, that taxation measures to stop land monopoly may be necessary, will have undoubtedly to be acted on. The provision of more money for State advances, as indicated by the Loader of the Labour Party, may largely have to be directed to the relief of existing settlers who are snowed under with mortgages. It is not surprising, even if it is not consistent, of the Leader of the Opposition to make his appearance thus early in the new Parliament in the role of a retrenchment advocate. While the Reform Party held the national purse-strings, they trotted off to the moneylenders as regularly as the seasons came round, and this sudden change in their tune will deceive nobody. At the same time, there is now a suggestion that the moneylenders in London may be inclined to put on the brake, so that the latest expedient of debentures for raising money mav have an early trial within, as well as without, the Dominion. It is certainly satisfactory to find that the Buller Gorge railway con nections are among the works which the Government aims to complete without further delay, and a comparison of the estimated cost of the work with that of the other main lines to be placed in the same category of urgency, shows that it promises a sui er return than any of them. It is safe to predict that the Government will not be allowed to ignore for any length of time the need for better and more pensions for those members of the community who are prevented, through one cause or another, from earning a livelihood. It is likewise probable that definite measures to appease the land hunger and restore the small farmers to solvency and ctability, will be insisted upon next session. The prime need of New Zealand is a. policy directed, not at the further enrichment of those who are well-off already, but at the banishment of poverty. In short, the goal must be that of distributive justice, which should be 'aimed at no less in State expenditure than in the enactment of laws giving equality of access.to the country’s resources. In so far as the new departure tends thereto, it means an improvement upon the policy it has replaced, but there is obviously vast room for further improvement.