REFORM’S STEWARDSHIP.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 11 October 1928, Page 4

REFORM’S STEWARDSHIP.

The review of the Government’s stewardship given by Hon. Mr Hawken last night, though necessarily not exhaustive, should be sufficient to convince the average elector in Taranaki that though the Government has not been able to bring Utopia any nearer, it has igov-ern-ed wisely and discreetly under all the circumstances 1 . If the electors will discern between rhetoric and sound argument, they will find that the -Government’s critics generalise vaguely in their condemnation of its administration. Those who condemn it because it is not pushing ahead with land settlement also have most to say against it because of its borrowing. The inconsistency of the critics is at times amazing until it is remembered that the Government’s record in office forces them into purely destructive criticism. The United-Nationalist-Liberals find that Reform has been advancing along Liberal lines for many years in certain respects 1 and that the old gibes about the party being composed of Tories will Jno longer impress anybody. Labour finds it equally impossible to make an impression with the old stock phrases about the Government’s lack of sympathy with the working mam and the small farmer, for such Reform legislation as its housing, State loans and intermediate credits have already provided the answer to the well-worn arguments of the Labour opposition. If there is any province in New Zealand where Reform should be assured of a hearty response to its appeal for further support it is Taranaki, a province of small farm-holdings. Being farmers, the majority of the electors ought to know for themselves just how much practical worth there is in the claims of those who tell them that they would place more farmers on more land with a total absence of financial worries and difficulties. The Government has already demonstrated its understanding of the needs of the small farmer by its sympathetic attitude towards the needs of dairymen, poultry-men, pig-raisers, fruit growers and bee-keepers. If there is one class more than any other which should be apprecia t ive of the Governmeat’s policy of getting all possible out of the land at present occupied, for the'benefit of the people already on it, instead of plunging headlong into now settlement schemes, 1 it. is that represented by the average farmer in Taranaki.