DOMINION POLITICS

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 31 July 1928, Page 6

DOMINION POLITICS

OPPOSITION POINT OF VIEW

ADDRESS BY ME JI. E. HOLLAND

(By Telegraph —Press Association.) PALMERSTON N., July 30. Mr H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, addressed an exceedingly large audience to-night. He made reference to the recent rumours associating his name with the Dunedin South constituency. He said none of cue papers publishing these rumours nad approached him to aieertam whether they were true or otherwise.

The allegation as to promises made riy him affecting the Puller electorate was without foundation and evidently based on the situation which arose in 1918 in connection with the Grey electorate. He had been selected Without opposition for the fourth time as the Labour candidate for the Buller electorate, and had no intention of leaving that constituency. Furthermore, lie never at any time received a request to allow Ins "name to go into the Dunedin South selection ballot, He was confident that Dunedin South would be among the seats won by Labour this year.

Mr Holland debit with the position of the parties in Parliament and in the electorates, claiming that the real fight, was between the Labour Party and the Reform Party. He said that, on almost every no-confidence morion within recent years the Nationalists nod voted in support of the Go ye ram cur, Since Air iCoates became Prime Minister there had been 57 divisions of what might be termed front rank importance. In 38 of these the Nationalists had voted either solidly or in majority with the Government. Indeed, in 22 of these 38 divisions every Nationalist present had gone into the Government lobby. In 15 divisions a majority of the Nationalists voted with the Labour Party, and in three divisions they split evenly, one half voting With the Government and the ©’tiler half with Lab--olU‘ LAND AND FINANCE. Mr Holland quoted statistics to prove that aggregation prevailed under the Reform Party’s land legislation, and also to show that while the farmers had been promised freehold, all they had got was a nnortgagehold of threatening dimensions. Now that statistics were being used adversely to the Government, lie said they found that pages of statistical information which hitherto had been published year by year were now being cut out, of the Year Book and. the Mqnthly Abstract of Statistics. This was s ; o in the case of the figures relating to the sum total of registered mortgages, deposits in the Post Office 'Savings Bank and (according to iMr Poison) the Public Debt. The grounds for this policy were stated to be that the figures were misleading. It had taken the Reform Party 16 years to find this out.

The charge that a financial dictatorship ruled in New Zealand was m'ade by Mr Holland. He said the Government’s policy was considerably inJiueneed by -this dictatorship. After repeated attacks by the banks on the Post Office Savings Bank the Government decided to reduce the maximum deposits on which interest would be paid, and this was eventually done, with the result that some millions of money was driven from the Post Office Savings Bank to privately owned banks, and the Government was eventually under the necessity of borrowing at uj) to probably 54 per cent,., money which it previously held at 34 per cent. The only possible effect of this policy was to make money dcatrer.

The State Advances Office had also been made the subject of an attack, and within one month of its 1925 victory the rate -of interest on State Advances loans to farmers and workers had been lifted from 4J to 5J per cent. This was followed by a restriction of advances which in 1928 as against 1927, meant, a reduction of well over a. million sterling in the case of workers and nearly one and a half millions in the case of the farmers. The banks had made use of the Welfare League to distribute newspaper propaganda against the Post Office Savings Banks, the 'State Advances Office, the Public. Trust and other State institutions of a soc ial isti c ehar ac t er. RURAL 'CREDITS. Dealing with rural credits on the lines of his 'Address-in-Reply speech, Mr Hollan.d reminded his hearers that, up to July only about £25,000 had been subscribed by the public, and that the whole of the balance had been underwritten by the Bank of New Zealand at £93 10s, which was £1 per cent, better than the price at wilier the bonds were offered to the public. The Minister had declined to answer Mr Holland’s questions when they were put to him in the House, and it was not .until three weeks had elapsed that the issue had been underwritten at £93 10s, but the Minister claimed that the arrangement for the underwriting had been made before the bonds were issued. 'There had been a remarkable, silence on the part of all but a few newspapers in this connection, and also with respect to the action of the banks in instructing their managers that the sale ‘of rural bonds was not to be puslie d. Referring to the position in 'Western Samoa, Mr Holland said the Government stood condemned for it's line of action in connection with the radiogram sent from .Samoa to a New Zealand paper. After the Government had satisfied itself that the message was a libel on the Samoans and a falsehood in every other respect., and after it had administered a reprimand to the minor 'official for his share of the responsibility, the Government then deliberately held from the public all the information relating to what had been done and left it to be inferred I that after all there might be something in the ■sensational statements contained in the radio message. -Subsequent admissions dragged from the Go vernment on the floor of the House constituted' a complete justification of the attitude of himself and h.ks colleagues in regard to this incident.