The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, February 12th, 1938. MAKING A CASE AGAINST LABOUR.

Grey River Argus, 12 February 1938, Page 8

The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, February 12th, 1938. MAKING A CASE AGAINST LABOUR.

It has been for some time past a matter of much comment throughout the country that the political campaigning preferred by the National Party has been of the garden party variety. The

audiences on such occasions are specially selected ones. Attacks on the Government, fair or foul, are therefore sure of cordial applause over the tea cups. When it comes, however, to facing the general public, the intrepid attackers appear to lose their punch. They seek to cover up the defect with complaints in which hecklers are compared very unfavourably indeed with the garden party audiences. Allowing for the fact that at political meetings there usually will be found a sprinkling of individuals whose enthusiasm runs away with their discretion, there is little or no party capital of any value to be made by blaming everybody except those who applaud because there should not have been unanimous accord with whatever the speaker said. It is still more un fail* to blame a Party because some of its supporters heckle another Party. Yet this is evident ly going to be one of the expedient's of the National Party, and particularly its press during the general election campaign. So much is evident from the publicity already being given what few public meetings there have yet been held by National Party campaigners. Such a course is not adopted without a special reason. Tt is meant, among other -things, to bolster the rather poor case which the Nationalists are putting forward. Tt was a poor case for his Party which Mr K. J. Holyoake here advanced, and. if anything, the hecklers helped him along .the road by suggesting important aspects of national affairs wherewith he could deal. Our evening contemporary did not find much in his speech from which to point its claim that he showed the Government’s “shop window” glittered with more than gold. In fact, it had to call to the rescue a visiting finance capitalist, whose capacity to intervene in New Zealand politics is apparently his lack of familiarity with the country. This particular commentator, Sir Josiah Stamp, it admits to have studied our internal situation no more than he was able to do as a passenger on a liner which called for a day at Auckland. And, even so, the only brick that he did throw was" the old suggestion that New Zealand can better itself only by the grace of outsiders, and that if there were a slump, abroad, it would apply a test as to whether the Dominion Government should not retrench at the present time. Such a conjecture does not become any more noteworthy when made by a visiting finance capitalist than when it is made by a Nationalist newspaper. To give it some colour of importance, our contemporary once more trots out figures showing how the revenue of the State has been increasing since Labour came into power, but it carefully omits to compare the rate at which national indebtedness used. to grow before Labour came into power and the rate at which it is growing now. At other times, anti-Labour newspapers have I made a great song about the | evils of an unbalanced budget, whereas now they give the Administration no credit for the fact that it sees that the country pays its way. If the revenue this year will total thirty-five millions it is a pretty fair criterion of the state of the Dominion. Before Labour took office, the national debt was growing, even in the best of times, at an alarming rate —so much so, indeed, that a third' of the revenue this year,

should- it.total thirty-five millions, must go to pay interest on that debt. 'The Nationalist press quotes the old country as an example of prosperity for this country to study, whereas the cry there is that taxation has gone to the uttermost extreme. Another cry of the anti-Labour press is that the cost of living has risen, but the obvious fact is that prices are better because there is more purchasing power, and the great mass of the people are living better by far than they lived when lack of the means to buy food forced down prices to a level that threatened all and sundry with bankruptcy. The funniest thing about the National Party propaganda is the manner in which it flies away from the present to the future at one minute and at another minute to the past. Thus it says good times now are sinful if there should be_ bad times later on, and the ‘"‘Star” also says that, the late Government by wage-cutting and retrenchment and inaction was justified . “by the improvement in conditions noticeable at the time Labour came into office.” Now the improvement did not begin to be noticeable until Labour began to bring it about by reversing the process of wage-cutting by increasing employment, by guaranteeing payable prices, and by planning against depression at any future time. Last year’s reduction of fifteen thousand in the number of unemployed is alone a pretty good justification for the budgetary policy, and another has been record levels reached in the figures for production and oversea trading. In addition, the country has acquired great assets in the shape of improved means of transport and 'communication and social services. It might be imagined that, the Opposition reckon these things valueless from the way in which they complain about expanded revenue and enlarged public utilities. No doubt, what they want is to. have the great bulk of the proceeds of national industry concentrated in the hands of the comparative few. It would great ly clarify the issue if they had only the honesty and candour to say so.