STRONG PROTESTS

Grey River Argus, 2 May 1932, Page 7

STRONG PROTESTS

Too Many Commissions AND OVERSEA DEBT TOLL. WELLINGTON, April 30. Government by commissions was strongly condemned by Mr J. Connolly (Coalition, Mid-Canterbury) in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon. “There are men in the House with better knowledge and more practical experience than the members of the commissions which we have had, and I want to enter a very strong protest,’’ he said. Mr Connolly, speaking on the third reading of the National Expenditure Adjustment Bill, said he thought that the Government should at least be given credit tor the interest and rent reductions. The Government had yielded to popular opinion and done a thing that it had been stated was impossible of fulfilment. He thought, that the Government was in duty bound to promise the Civil Servants an increase in wages as soon as reasonably possible. They had suffered a reduction of 10 per cent in wages 12 months before they received any relief in rent and interest. There could be no doubt that there was truth in the statement that the standard of living in New Zealand had been lowered, said Mr Connolly, but in three years before the depression, some £35,000,000 had been borrowed. Ft was now up to the Dominion to make the greatest possible use of the money and take the best advantage of its opportunity.

“The position would improve if the Prime Minister and Cabinet relied on the elected representatives of the people instead of going outside,’’ he said. “I see plainly that the best use has not been made of the money.’’ The public service and old age pensioners would submit with good grace to sacrifices if they could only be shown a way out of the difficulties. The Government was making no forward move in any way. It could not repeat its taxation proposals and it could not impose these hardships on the people again. “Every section of the community is making sacrifices, and owing to the low prices of our produce we cannot pay much longer the interest on our national debt,” he continued. “If we export foodstuffs at a low price to the country that wo borrowed from are we not doing a national service to that country? Are wo not in just about the same position as the mortgagor and mortgagee? It is up to the people of England to do something for us, because we give them cheap foodstuffs. ’ ’

Another reason advanced by Mr Connolly for sympathetic action by Britain was that New Zealand had relieved that country of 80.000 immigrants If those people had not come to New Zealand there would have been that additional number of unemployed in England. The only way the position could be satisfactorily dealt with was by putting in the hands of members the power that was rightly theirs, and dropping the commissions.