The Premier Wooing the Voters.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8141, 15 November 1905, Page 7

The Premier Wooing the Voters.

land Owners Beware.

(Per Press Association.) AUCKLAND, Nov. 14.

The Premier addressed an audience of about five thousand Auckland electors in the Drill Hal! to-night, tho Mayor, Mr Meyers, presiding. " Mr Seddorj dwelt on the prosperous condition of the colony, and at length combatted the assertions of unfairness to Auckland in the distribution of pubJic works. The North Island Trunk Railway, ho said, would be completed within three years. The Government had undertaken to renew the guarantee respecting the export of apples, and also intended to assist, fruit growers to get the blight out of their trees and toremove difficulties attending the industry. Any increase in taxation would go in the direction of a graduated land tax. The promised reductions on Customs taxation should include, amongst other items, cheap calicos and clothing work for the working classes, besides a substantial reduction on tobacco and the freeing of the breakfast table. The condition of the colony was shown by the fact that the Government now wanted from 500 to 1000 pick and shovel men for railway works and could not get them. Provis-ion was being made for the erection of SOO workers' home 3in the vicinity of Auckland. He hoped the crowning effort of his life would be the establishment of a system of annuities under which the working classes cou'd invest any £50 they had to spare towards the purchase of annuities, the Government to subsidise such deposits. Another reform he hoped to accomplish was an enactment giving a wife the right to half of the family home, so that the husband could not sell or mortgage it without her consent. The Government submitted itself to the colony with confidence, knowing that it had done its duty faithfully and had nothing to fear. A vote of thanks to Mr Seddon and of confidence in the Administration was carried unanimously.