P.M. DENOUNCES ANTI-SOCIAL ACTION

Northern Advocate, 19 April 1947, Page 6

P.M. DENOUNCES ANTI-SOCIAL ACTION

(Special) WELLINGTON. This Day. The conscience of the people of the country would not long tolerate the various groups which were repeatedly threatening to coerce the community, said the Prime Minister (Mr Fraser) when addressing the Dairy Conference on Thursday.

“There must be a stopping place to anti-social action from whatever quarter,” he added. “No country can survive economically. and if it could it could not survive socially, unless there is a realisation among all sections of their responsibilities in pulling their weight in the industrial life of the community.” he said. “I am not going to blame any one section, but I am going to say that all require to have a sense of deep responsibility in discussing economic matters and determining questions of prices and wages and allied questions. “It would be very easy for the Government to remove stabilisation and all other restrictions and let prices and wages and farm returns and profits and dividends soar. ALTERNATIVE COOPERATION “They would mount up like a fountain and would then collapse like a fountain when it is turned off and there would be widespread suffering. “The alternative, and the only alternative, is cooperation. “The Government could use restrictive measures and could establish itself as a dictatorship and use force. "Occasionally the use of compulsion, and even force, is unavoidable, but its constant use is not a sensible or successful policy, and unless the common sense and conscience of the people of the country as a whole are awakened, then the economic life of our land would collapse. “It is their individual and collective responsibility to endeavour to institute a system of cooperation. “In this respect I would like to see industrial workers and farmers getting together and discussing matters frankly and plainly and in a friendly fashion in regard to each other’s responsibilities.

NO BUREAUCRATIC STATE “For instance, how can markets be maintained unless more commodities which have been produced are sent away from the country as quicklv as possible? "The first condition of success is cooperation from all concerned. “Neither myself nor my party has the conception of building up a bureaucratic state, or even one that, with Parliamentary representatives elected every three years, would leave an army of civil servants to govern the people. “This conception is purely imaginary. “We could not possibly endure this sort of thing. “If we are ever, to have an industrial democracy the people engaged in producing the wealth of the country must have some say in its production and its realisation.

“This is the position as I see it and as I believe my party sees it.”