‘COMMON SENSE’ AND ‘HONESTY’

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4960, 25 February 1937, Page 5

‘COMMON SENSE’ AND ‘HONESTY’

(To the Editor). Sir, —Browsing through some back numbers of your paper the other day I came across the following in your issue of August 17, 1935, not long before the general election: “Labour Policy. Use of National Credit. Mr. Langstone’s Address.” It was a report of an address delivered by the present Minister of Lands on the Labour Party’s platform for the coming election at a public meeting in the Parish Hall, Te Kuiti. Dealing with the farmer and his problems . the report states:—“The farmer had to have an income to meet his monetary commitments, and the Labour Party would take the average farmer and provide a price level that would make him solvent. It would be necessary to give the dairy farmer Is 3d a pound for his butterfat. The Labour Party would guarantee the Otorohanga and all other factories this Is 3d a pound, and the directors would know this was available, for the Government would buy up all their production at this price. This would be paid for by the National Credit.” Yet the guaranteed price is 12 9-16 d for first quality butter, not Is 3d. No, Sir, I do not want anyone to remind me that there is a difference between “butterfat” and “butter,” I know about the “overrun” and also that .it takes most of it to pay for cream collections and factory operating expenses. Further down in the report Mr. Langstone is reported as saying, “There would be no more borrowing and New Zealand would be a debt free people.” Yet only last week the Government was floating a public loan for the State Advances Corporation. Further still Mr. Langstone is reported as saying that the Labour Party “would take over those things best managed by the State, such as retiring people at an early age by means of non-con-

tributory superannuation.” Yet MrC. A. Barrell, M.P. for Hamilton, told an audience at Horsham Downs a fortnight ago that the Government’s superannuation would be on a compulsory contributory basis. Mr. Barrell is a Government member. In all these things Mr. Langstone must have been speaking authoritatively, for not long after the election he became a Minister of the Crown, and is therefore one of the leaders of the Labour Party. Right at the end of the report he is reported as saying, “It was just a matter of applying common sense and honesty to public affairs.” Perhaps it was “common sense,” of a kind, to give the farmer a pittance so that the plums might be preserved for the Trade Unionists, perhaps it was “common sense,” of a kind, to continue floating public loans so as to keep in with the “Kelly gangs” and investors in the cities, perhaps it was “common sense,” of a kind, to trick people into voting for free superannuation and then taxing them to pay for it, but it will take a great deal of imagination to describe these things as “honesty.” The report states that the 130 people present carried a “vote of confidence in the Labour Party as a fit body to occupy the Treasury benches.” Perhaps some of the Labour Party supporters in Te Kuiti, if there are any of. them left, will explain.—l am, etc., FRANK WHAT-A-TANGLE.