THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVI, Issue 308, 27 November 1936, Page 2

THE LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —To-day the Labour Parties throughout New Zealand celebrate the first anniversary of Labour rule in this Dominion, and a comparison of Labour’s legislation during its first year of office with the first year of the previous Government is interesting, though perhaps odious to the remnants of that party. The Coalition was elected at the end of 1931. By March 17, 1932, the usefulness of the Arbitration Court was destroyed. In March thousands of workers had been taken from the Public Works Department and were

employed at relief rates of pay. On March 23 legislation was brought down providing for the sending of married men to unemployed camps at a wage of £1 17s 6d per week. Then came the increase in the wages tax. A motion by a Labour member to exempt from taxation the wages of blind women was defeated. Apprentice agreements were broken and apprentices walked the streets in search of jobs. The old-age pensioners had their pensions reduced on an average of almost £4 per pension and the old age people lost £150,000 per year. The widow’s pension was reduced nearly £4 per year while the children suffered a ten per cent, reduction. While the price of gold was advancing from less than £4 to about £7 per ounce and gold mining shares were enjoying a boom the miners suffering from miners’ phthisis had their pensions reduced 2s 6d per week and their wives’ and children’s pensions were reduced ten per cent. Regarding boys in blind institutes, whose fathers had been killed in action and for whom the Government had paid 10s per week, as a military pension, this contribution was abolished. Mortgage interest was reduced 10 per cent., but the economic pension of. soldiers was reduced 29 per cent. War pensions (other than economic) were reduced 17} per cent., but the war debt interest only 10 per cent. All this while the real wealth of the Dominion measured in goods and services and potential services was increasing. The Labour Party came into power a year ago to-day. Its first act was to make provision for a Christmas bonus for relief workers. Its legislation includes the Arbitration and Conciliation Act Amendment, a vigorous public works policy, which has absorbed over 20,000 workers under the best agreement in the world, increases in wages to workers, increases to old age pensioners, invalidity pension, equality of Maoris with . Europeans, guaranteed prices for farmers’ produce, the abolition of section 59 of the Finance Act which deprived civil servants of civil liberty, the abolition of the undemocratic principle of dual voting at local body elections, the control in the interests of the people of credit and currency, and the establishment of the principle that wages shall be assessed on what is a reasonable standard of comfort, taking into consideration our capacity to produce the means of life. The reasonable standard of comfort is in accordance with John Ruskin’s statement that the end of production is consumption. He stated that seeing that the end of consumption is life, in the final analysis there is no wealth but life. And Jesus Christ said, “I came that ye might have life and that ye might have it more abundantly.” So the Labour Party’s policy is the practical application of the Christian principles laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. I wish the Labour Government “many happy returns of the day.”—l am, | etC '’ V. A. CHRISTENSEN. 46 Heretaunga Street.