Manawatu Daily Times The Budget Debate

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6626, 12 August 1931, Page 6

Manawatu Daily Times The Budget Debate

So far the honours of the debate upon the Budget, which opened in the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening, and is expected to continue for at least another week, rests with the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, the Opposition’s financial authority, who spoke on Thursday evening and held the attention of the House and the galleries even more closely than had the leader of his party and the Government’s Minister of Agriculture on the previous evening, when.startling developments had been predicted. As a matter of fact, Mr. Coates was not at his best in his opening of the debate, an eleventh hour’s change in the Opposition’s criticism of the Budget having placed him at some disadvantage in analysing a variety of intricate problems with which he had not acquainted himself. The Minister of Agriculture, however, was to profit by his opponent’s temporary embarrassment. He had simply to exchange conciliatory passages for conciliatory passages, a courtesy at winch he is an adept.

Mr. H. E. Holland, the leader of the Labour party, took up the story on Thursday afternoon, announcing that the first duty of himself and his colleagues was to get rid of the present Government as speedily as possible, and the next, piesumably, to dispose of the Reform party at the earliest possible opportunity. For a whole hour and a-half, or thereabouts, Mi. Holland thrust dishes of thi| description upon a satiated House, while members of his own party would have been glad enough to supply more palatable and more effective fare. The Hon. W. A. Veitch, who came into the House nearly twenty years ago as a Labour member, summed up Mr. Holland’s tirade very concisely. "The leader of the Labour paity, he said, “has not given his colleagues in Parliament one constructse thought. He did not make one suggestion Avorthy of consideration nor did he contribute anything likely to help the country out of its difficulties.” To this no emphasis need be added.

So far, as already stated, the speech of the Budget Debate is the one delivered by the Hon. W. Downie Stewart on Thursday night, folloAving the effusion of Mr. H. E. Plollaivd and the frank observations of the Hon. W. A. Veitch. Mr. SteAvart’s speech might have been delivered from either side of the House, Avithout giving offence to anyone, and, indeed, should have a very salutary effect upon the occupants of the cross benches. The late Minister of Finance in the Coates Government would not listen to the suggestion that the Budget should be balanced over a period of years so that the taxpayers’ burden might be relieved. "In the first place,” he pointed out, "there is the danger that if we deliberately adopt the policy of deficit finance it may be repeated in the future on too small provocation. In the second place deficit finance has a psychological effect on the London money market, Avhere it is of Antal importance to maintain our credit.” Here is a man avlio will run no risks with the Dominion’s good name.

From both sides of the House warm appreciation was accorded to Mr. Stewart’s speech and since has been reiterated from all parts of the countey. "Though he is not now Minister of Finance, and therefore has not access to all the facts,” said the Evening Post in the course of an editorial, “Mr. SteAvart’s past experience enables him to appreciate fully the gravity of the present position. Indeed, no member of the House is better qualified to judge lioav serious the crisis may be, or to advise what measures are necessary to meet the situation. Unfortunately the Reform party has not seen fit to give full and logical effect to the advice now tendered by the ex-Minister of Finance, but if the party will follow the lead given by Mr. Stewart in his Budget speech the co-operation offered in place of a joining of forces Avill be real and helpful.” Probably if the advice of Mr. Stewart had been endorsed by his colleagues at this stage the progress of "fusion” would have been very materially .accelerated.