MR. SAVAGE DENOUNCES “ OUR OPPONENTS ”

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 278, 24 November 1939, Page 8

MR. SAVAGE DENOUNCES “ OUR OPPONENTS ”

NEW RADIO SERIES Putting Farmers, Editors and Importers in Their Place “What the Government Is doing and why it is doing it.” This is to be the subject of a series of radio talks by the Prime Minister, Mr M. J. Savage, every Sunday evening beginning next Sunday. Th’e talks will be linked up to every radio station in the Dominion. Mr Savage has told the official Labour newspaper that he “will say enough in a quarter of an hour to keep editors writing for a week.” “There is a long story to be told and I intend to tell it direct to the people, a piece at a time over the air,” he said. “There is no other way by which I can reach the people. I cannot rely upon the daily newspapers because we have never had a fair run from them.” “Our opponents get selected positions in the newspapers and also the big headings, but our replies are published without big headings and without being given the same prominent positions. And when we draw attention to the matter the editor gets out the foot-rule and tells us about the amount of space that has been given to statements by members of the Government.” “There is a definite move to-day to sabotage the Government’s war efforts in every way, and it is my job as the stead of the Government to see that those people do not get away with it,” he said. “And the machinery and methods at my disposal will be used to the full, and I don’t intend to apologise to anyone for doing so. We want to reach the people; w$ feel that we have got their goodwill in spite o»f the screams of our opponents.”

Mr. Savage said that in his Sunday bvening broadcasts he proposed to talk tan -the problems of New Zealand as he Law them.

“I will take a section at a time and deal with it each Sunday night, and I Won’t get any professors of political economy to tell me what I shall say pext.” he added. “I will be doing my town thinking and not give anyone else’s (ideas. And I will be speaking for jnyself and for the Government.

i “We have got past the apologising 1 stage; there are onjy certain means of peaching the people and we are going Lo use those means.”

Commenting on the agitation that is peing carried on against the Government, Mr. Savage said there seemed to be an unholy alliance between the importers and a section of the farmers. “I want to make it clear that the farmers cannot have guaranteed prices without there being control of imports, we cannot hold wages without controlling imports, and we cannot keep up pensions without controlling imports. “Those who are talking about letting fcontrol of imports go, and there are (farmers amongst them, seem to overlook the fact that the Government has guaranteed a certain price for the farmers’ produce. Of course, if the farmers really do not want the guaranteed price we might be able to get rid of it. I am not suggesting that we should do so, but it would be easy to get rid of it* “However, if the farmers want the guaranteed price sustained, wages and pensions must be sustained also. And when we sustain wages, the guaranteed price and pensions, we at least hold the purchasing power of the people where it is now.

“But if we let people order goods from overseas without any thought of where the money is to come from to pay for those goods it is a million to one chance that we will land ourselves in the same difficulty we were in last December.”