VALUE OF THE VOTE

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 77, 28 February 1938, Page 2

VALUE OF THE VOTE

BOLSTERING INCOMPETENCE. HON. J. G. COBBE’S ASSERTION. “Why is the Government, by the aid of a compliant majority, forcing noon the freedom-loving people of New Zealand the fetters of dictatorship, the shackles of State control, and the smothering weight of crude and harassing regulations? Is their action due to a foolish optimism which has reached tho stage of giddy recklessness, under the influence of which they have thrown away the dictates of prudence ? Or are they foolish enough to think the people of. New Zealand are going to prostrate themselves beneath the wheels of a Juggernaut copied from Moscow plans?” The above questions were put to an audience which Hon. J. G. Cobbe addressed at Eeilding on Friday. Mr Cobbe proceeded : “Attempts are being made to-day to wipe out our freedom and subordinate our liberty to the dictation of a Socialist Party. The farmer, the manufacturer and the business man are being gradually controlled by the State. Formerly the produce, stock or goods produced belonged to the producer or the buyer, they were his own to dispose of as he thought lit. To-day they may be disposed of as a Socialistic Government thinks fit. “The Primary Products Marketing Amendment Act gives the Government power to take a man’s produce at a price to be fixed by those seizing it, and pay tor it in currency the real purchasing value of which will depend upon the volume of its issue. I do not know of any other part of the British Empire where such high-handed despotism exists. Why has New Zealand become the victim of dictatorship? Have we lost our spirit, has our freedom been buried, is personal liberty a thing of the past? We, or our parents, left the Old Land with its hoary traditions, ancient usages and limited opportunities, and in this new land made our homes under what we then rightly regarded as greater freedom, wider opportunity and more liberal conditions. There has grown up in these homes a race of young New Zealanders, healthy, well-educated freedom-loving and strong.

‘‘But side by side with the material advancement of our people there has crept into our land a sinister element

from oversea, subversive of religion, honesty and morality; this has come partly through the false teaching of unprincipled, self-seeking demagogues, and partly through the importation of Vicious literature filled with the corrupt doctrines of Russian and*Gernian Socialists. Every intelligent New Zealander taking the slightest interest in public affairs knows that the present Government is a Socialist Government of an advanced type. Socialism is the enemy of freedom; and dictatorship is the final objective of the revolutionary Socialist. Mussolini was first an advanced Socialist, but when a split took place in the ranks of the Italian Socialists he saw his chance and is now a Fascist dictator. Volumes of high-sounding rhetoric cannot hide the fact that the object of the- present Government is, by means of excessive taxation and increased costs, to bring down the man who has made a success Of his undertaking, and bolster up the man who is incompetent or has not made the most of his opportunities, but whose vote is equal to that of his neighbour.”