Prime Minister States Country’s Alternatives

Northern Advocate, 22 July 1938, Page 6

Prime Minister States Country’s Alternatives

WELLINGTON, This Day. The Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, following the Hon. Adam Hamilton in the Budget debate last evening, said that New Zealand did not need to worry about taxation per head, it was taxation per pocket that counted. If pockets were well-filled it was no intolerable hardship to pay a greater share for the good of the community as a whole and for the happiness of those with experience of empty pockets. “I repeat,” he said, “that the important factor is not any increase in rates, which had been small over the whole period, but increase in total income. which has been very considerable.” What People Have Left, “Since March, 1938, he said, the increase in taxation aggregated lit millions. Over the same period, it was estimated that income in the aggregate had increased not less than £45,008.000. Mr. Savage sai'd that after paying taxation people still had nearly 34 million pounds left. He would like to make the point that money that was being received in taxation was spent in the interests of the people. It would be used as follows: debt services, £9,500,000 (a legacy of past Governments); social services, £ 12,700,000 (which was handed straight back to the people); highways, £3,200.000; defence, £2,000,000; and the remaining eight millions would bo spent on essential repairs, law and order, and administration.

Two main items of Increased expenditure in the last two years were social services and defence, and he had no apology to make for either. Social services were an essential. They were no luxury. After all, the people's well-being was the highest law, and, so far as the Labour Government was concerned, it would continue to make its laws with that end in view. Defence Policy. Mr Savage went on to deal with defence. New Zealand, he said, had to play her part in the defence of the British Commonwealth as well as undertaking a much larger measure of her own defence than she had done in the past. The most important advance had been the inauguration of an air defence scheme. As for criticism that the Government was not doing enough, he thought it ill became a party which itself smashed the defence system of the country seven years ago. Taking this year's total from all sources, the Government had trebled expenditure ou defence since it took office. Income and Spending. Mj' Savage said Now Zealand had had a steadily mounting national income during the past three years. Wages, for example, had increased >n three years from G 6 million pounds to nearly 99 million. Last year trade had increased. The value of production had risen. The value of goods available for consumption had risen. In other words, the people were spending more, and they had a greater degree of material comfort. They were not only consuming more; they were producing more, and saving more. The picture today was bright, but it could, and would, be made brighter.

Already the Government had done much in many ways to secure prosperity, and to distribute its benefits to more people. Within less than three years, they had achieved a generation of reforms Out of a total of over 80 years’of self-government, Labour had been in power for less than three years. There might be flaws in the structure, ho said, but the foundations were sound. It would not be difficult to remedy any defects or errors of omission. Time and opportunity alone were required. They had the ideas, and they had the imagination to write them into the laws of the country. Government to Go Forward. The Budget disclosed the Government’s policy, and its determination to go forward in making conditions of life better for everybody. And yet the Opposition party wanted to arrest that movement. They wanted to go back to what they called their “sound administration of- the past,” That was their own phrase. But they had yet to show him in what way Labour's policy was not sound. At least it was producing prosperity, and, judged by results, that was more than their opponents were able to- do. They said they were going to put their reverse policy into effect by cost reductions. Even the vague compensated prices scheme in their official pronouncements on the subject had becorpe a mere cost reduction scheme. What did these reductions mean? Wages cuts? Dismissals? He defied them to show how their cost reductions could be made otherwise. The Opposition could not deny that. Why did they want to attack the basis of the present prosperity? Why did they want to put the clock back? Why could not people have decent wages and decent pensions?

Questions for Electors. Why should the people not have the fullest benefits of the country’s social services—the best education possible, the greatest safeguards of health? Why did the National Party oppose the social security plan? They did not reply, because they could not. They had no satisfactory answer, and he was not the only one who knew that; hundreds of thousands of electors knew, toe. Those who did not had only to ask the same questions between now and November. The silence of the evasions which would be their reply would convince them, too. It would be for the people this year to say whether they preferred progress and prosperity under the present Government or whether they preferred to go back to the old ways of scrimping and fear of poverty and expensive sickness. He was pretty sure the people had not forgotten the blank cheque the Nationalists asked for and received seven years ago. And the people had not forgotten that the Nationalists, so-called, were only new in name. The leopard could not change his spots. Tories might change their name, but they could not change their policy. Nor had they changed their hearts towards the majority of the people. The Prime Minister was greeted with a round of applause from both sides of the House on the conclusion of his address. The adjournment of the debate was moved by Mr R. McKeen, and the House rose at 10.7. (Continued on Page 9).