STATE INSTITUTIONS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 27 October 1928, Page 9

STATE INSTITUTIONS

MR HOLLAND TO CRITICS “WHICH WOULD THEY ABOLISH?’ Pronouncements made, by his rival party leaders that they were opposed to socialisation were replied to on Ihursday by the Leader of the Labour I arty, Air 11. E. Holland, in the course ot Ins speech’ at the Town Hall (reports “The Post”). He asked them which of the existing State institutions they proposed to curtail or abolish. • In his recent speech at Auckland, said Air Holland, Sir Joseph Ward was reported as having said that the encroachmenfc by the State on the field of private enterprise was detrimentally affecting all commercial progress, and causing a feeling of insecurity in the minds of those engaged in business; and, further, that the United Party held that trading for profit in these enterprises was not a legitimate function of the State. This, said Air Holland was wholly in conflict with Sir Joseph Ward’s pronouncement made in his speech on the Financial Statement on 30th September, 1919. Op that occasion Sir Joseph showed liow, by setting up a State bank, they could make £500,000 a vear out of it, and bow this profit from 'a State enterprise could be used to reduce taxation. In the same speech Sir Joseph had advocated the nationalisation of the coal mines, contending that-, since the annual output of coaf in New Zealand was over 2,000,000 tons, the country would only require to gel, 2s a ton out of it to reap over £200,000 a year, and it would only be a matter of time before we would get £250,000 from these sources. ' This amount. Sir Joseph bad proposed, should also be utilised to reduce taxation. Protesting that there wgye some people in New Zealand who thought that the State could not do anything satisfactorily, Sir Joseph Ward in 1919 declared that the State bad run the Post Office, the Railways, the Government Insurances Offices, the Public Trust, and other State services and had done well in the interest of the community. Now he was leading what appeared to be a campaign in the opposite direction. Referring to Air Coates’s denunciations of socialisation, Air Holland said he wanted to ask that gentleman to give a straight answer to the question of which of the socialised institutions of New Zealand he proposed to abolish. If Air Coates were really serious in his fulmination against Socialism, it followed that he. was antagonistic to the social services represented by the Government Railways, the Post and ’.telegraph Department, the Education and Health Departments, the Public Trust, the State Advances, the State coal mines, and other State undertakings. And since this was so the public were entitled to know in what order Mr Coates proposed to direct- his attack against these services if he should sue coed in getting hark to office. “T venture to say,” said Air Holland, “that none of the people of this country will stand for an attack on the establishment cf State institutions.”