CARVING OUR WAY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 244, 12 September 1933, Page 2

CARVING OUR WAY.

DOAIINION AND PROBLEAIS. AIR COATES’S FAITH. Per Press Association. CHRISTCHURCH, Sept. 11. “With God’s help and with good health we will carve our way through these difficulties,” said the ActingPrime Alinister, Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, in concluding an address before a party of political friends at luncheon to-day. Air Coates was enthusiastically received, and, in a brief speech, he surveyed the problems which confronted the Coalition Government and the measures, including currency depreciation, which the Government had taken to meet them.

It was really too much to expect to hear anything good about the Government, said Air Coates, but its members were elected to decide on the best measures for the country’s rehabilitation, and their only objective had been to follow the policy through to this conclusion. Action necessitating sacrifice was always difficult to take, but lie believed the people of New Zealand now recognised that there was no alternative which did not involve sacrifice. He knew the outlook of members of the United Party. Their whole policy had been to distribute benefits, and they were the last to inflict hardship on the people. To-day, however, they realised with everybody else that adjustments had to be made when the national income fell so drastically. He believed that the people of the Dominion knew that the present Government was doing as well as any Government could do.

Air Coates said that the main problem which had faced the Government was the tremendous fall in farmers’ returns on the one hand and the very slow downward price movement of the commodities which farmers had to buy on the other.

“Although there may be difficulties later on, all the Government is responsible for is whatever deficit may be brought about by our depreciation of currency,” he said, “and against that you have to set off the increase in the national income, which is its result. Of course, we have to draw a line across our Budget at some month in the year and the position may then seem bad, but I am sure that ultimately the thing will cancel itself out and our sterling assets will not be a loss.”

To-day, he continued, things seemed to be improving. The money derived from the exchange depreciation did not stay in farmers’ pockets. It gave increased purchasing power to the community, and ere Tong its effect would be felt in the cities.