Nash Means Achievement

Hutt News, Volume 20, Issue 26, 26 November 1946, Page 2

Nash Means Achievement

THE I!ITT AND NEW ZEALAND Hutt Valley dwellers daily see evidence of the transformation of their valley during the last eleven years. As much as any man, Walter Nash lias contributed to this transformation. Eighteen and a half thousand mor» people have come to live in the Valey since 1936, bringing its total population to 56,000. Secondary industries in Lower lutt City and in Upper Hutt employ 6 000 workers, nearly 2 000 of ./horn are women or girls. These Industries today have vacancies for :i further 1000 workers. Forty-five new industrial establishments employing well over 400 people have commenced business in the Valley during-the last two years. Compare this with 1935 when ioarly 1000 men were registered as unemployed at the Lower Hutt Unemployment Bureau , and when thousands of women and youths without employment were not permitted to even register. There arc 15,000 completed houses In the Hutt Valley, 5500 more than n 1935. More than 3000 of these are State houses let at modest rentals. One thousand more such reuses are under construction and when the Naenae, Taita, and Lower f-lutt blocks are built out, 6500 .-irate houses alone will have been built in the Valley.

innumerable public utilities such .if; roads, schools, bridges, and buildHgfi have mushroomed in the Valley during the last decade. A comparable social and cultural life has blossomed. The hand and brain of Waiter Nash appear in all this. In 19 35 Labour set to work to apply the plan which lifted New Zealand out of the marsh of unemployment and degrading poverty. Walter Nash was the architect of the financial and industrial portions of that plan. He devised and applied the Guaranteed Price Scheme which salvaged b'o per cent, of New Zealand's dairy farmers from bankruptcy and which has kept them the most prosperous farmers in the wdid. With the Hon. Dan. Sullivan he charted the expansion of secondary industry which now employs 25.000 more workers than in 1935 and produces goods to the annual value of £44,000,000, more than double the 1935 output. The Housing scheme both on She physical and the financial side was mainly of his authorship. Our Social Security and Jleaith Scheme, like which there is nothing in any other part of the world, was and still is his especial concern. Sharing with such men as the lute H E. Holland and M. J. Savage as ve]l as with Mr. W. E. Parry the great christian ideai of social secur, ity, he has besides provided the financial means to realise and perpetuate it. Above all. Waiter Nash has impioved and operated the financial machinery oi New Zealand since 1935 in such a way as to make all else possible. The economic anaemia which comes from money starvation he overcame by amending the Reserve Bank legislation, by using the public credit for housing and public works, and by facilitating all-round wage and salary increases. «.

New Zealand today is a fortunate and happy country in a world of fear, want, and unnayyiness. our primary producers ' are guaranteed unequalled prosperity on the basxs of the favourable prices recently negotiated by Walter Nash when in England. Manufacturers by import selection are assured of the materials .netessiary to Keep their e.sUblishments in full pioduction. Workers and beneficiaries are protected, by price control. These things are too real to deny They cannot be pooh poohed by cheap jibes about the inevitable food and clothing rationing, inadequate tradesmen's deliveries, and taxation. For six years more than a third of our resources has been turned from peace to war uses. £640,000,000 have been spent on the war. All but £220,000,000 has been paid for out of taxation and the overeat:debt has been reduced. , This has been the work of Walter Nash—and it lias been achieved without anyone suffering poverty. The very magnitude of the task and Walter Nash's constant devotion to it has been used insincerely by some to lampoon him as a Midas. Thinking people are not so easily misled. They have their eyes not on the inevitable irritations and shortages of the immediate post-war period, but on the' fast approaching time when our remaining war debt is repaid, taxation is soundly reduced, and the supply of goods available for purchase outstrips the volume of money in circulation, causing prices to remain stable without control.

The financial pclicy of Walter Nash is bringing this daily nearer. Walter Nash is a crusader for world citizenship. Just as individuals living the good life create local citizenship, and local communities living the good lifetogether create national citizenship Walter Nash sees world citizenship as being created by all nations' living -the good life together. This is his strongest ideal —a world of free people organised voluntarily into national communities co-operating readily and without fear each with the other; sharing the material of life and the fruits of their culture under conditions of uninterrupted peace and continuing progress. In Peter Eraser and Walter Nash New Zealand has had two outstanding ambassadors of world citizenship. Walter Nash by his fervent endeavours at various international conferences such as Bretton Woods, 1945 the International Labour Conference. 1944, of which he was President, Hot Springs Food Conference, 3943, and the Paris peace talks of this year, has added to New Zealand's name as a good citizen in the community of Nations. He has won for himself the name of an international statesman of acknowledged vision, acumen, and humanity of outlook.

For seventeen years Walter Nash has served the people of the Hutt as a member of Parliament. The R'ut't of 1946 is the proof, of that service. And for eleven years, incessantly working long and punishing hours and withstanding with dignity the tilts of politicians, cartoonists, and others, he has stood sturdily at New Zealand's financial and industrial helm. The return of a Labour Government with Walter Nash as Minister of Finance is a guarantee of rapidly expanding prosperity and of social justice. [Published by the N.Z. Labour Party by arrangement.]