LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXV, Issue 212, 7 August 1945, Page 4

LABOUR GOVERNMENT.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—Your correspondents, A. A. Sadd and ‘‘lnterested,” are striving to tell us that the present Parliament will end next election. However, we will wait till then for the results. Mr Sadd complains of “Hitlerish” methods, a few instances of which I would like to hear of. He then continues rather humorously to tell us of the way this Government is treating our ex-servicemen. Have they not had a better deal this war than the last? So far they certainly haven’t had to tramp the streets or queue up outside soup kitchens, and bog for old They haven’t been ..put on non-productive farms which they will have to walk off penniless in a few years’ time as they did after the last war. Returned soldiers have been able to learn a trade and decent wages are paid them while they learn.

Three thousand returned men have already been provided with State houses, while a further 2500 have purchased and built their own homes. More servicemen are housed already than in the history of the Tory party after the last war. “Interested” talks of soap-box politicians. I think the servicemen’s votes are worth more than “Interested’s” ideas on pacifists, because thev voted 33,622 for Labour as against 24,794 for the Nationalists. “Interested” also tells us that New Zealand has had .it and that England hasn’t bad a Labour Government. Yes, we have “had it”—we. have Social Security, free maternity benefits, free doctors, and free hospital fees; old age benefits; a 40-hour week; free milk in schools; the Fair Rents Act; extra family allowances; the guaranteed’ price; and State houses and others crcctccl on a much larger scalp in the last 10 vears than in any other similar period in New Zealand. Wo also have had Tory government; slave camps, where young people were sent for 10s a week; the Tory scheme of driving our Maoris down to the level of coolies; soup kitchens and malnutrition; and special police Who said Gestapo? —Yours, etc.. LABOURITE.