THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1935 MR. HISLOP'S PLEDGES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22259, 6 November 1935, Page 12

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1935 MR. HISLOP'S PLEDGES

So much was promised by the leader of the Democrat Party in his opening speech at Auckland that he has been chiefly engaged ever since in explaining to incredulous electors how he believes his pledges can be redeemed. His audiences in the Auckland Province in the last two days have been invited to enter with Mr. Hislop into a maze of figures. No doubt they have done their best to follow him, because most people are honestly anxious to know whether, in fact, Mr. Hislop can make all their dreams come true. It must have been disappointing to be treated to a long and involved argument on the points at issue between the Democrat leader and Mr. Coates, punctuated by endless talk of millions and tens of millions, with some hundreds of thousands thrown in to make up good measure of the pre-election kind. Actually his reply to Mr. Coates on the cost of fulfilling the Democrat programme is a waste of good campaigning time. The electors did not need to be informed by the Minister of Finance that it would cost a great deal more than New Zealand could afford. They could and did decide for themselves five weeks ago that it was financially impossible. From their own individual experience, they know they cannot, and j therefore the State cannot, cut off important sources of income while at the same time increasing expenditure at a. prodigal rate. Neither household accounts nor national Budgets can be balanced in that way. In both cases the inevitable result is debts and eaijly insolvency. Mr. Hi«lop must have realised that his appearance in the role of . Father Christmas five weeks ago was not convincing. No doubt that explains his present visit, his attempts to show that he can fill every stocking and that the filling will not cost so much after all. Moreover, as people are still sceptical, he asks them to believe that what Mr. Coates promises will cost much more. There is no need to dispute the figures Mr. Hislop sets down against Mr. Coates and then adds u£ to the tidy sum of £94,100,000. They belong to the realm of imagination, just as does Mr. Hislop's programme. The difference between £94,000,000 and £22,000,000 is less than nothing in the Never-Never country. All that Mr. Hislop has really proved is that he is an adept at long tots. What he conveniently ignores in comparing the Democrat promises with the Government's programme, is that he unconditionally undertakes to do a great many costly things, while the Government makes the realisation of its pledges subject to the provision of ways and means. Mr. Hislop may have forgotten all he promised at the Auckland Town Hall, but there he spoke confidently, recognising none of the limitations that handicap ordinary men. His favourite phrase was, "We can and will do" this, that and the next He varied this with, "Wo will restore," "We will help," "We can and will increase." "We will develop," "We will govern," and once and again, "We can and will." Very seldom did Mr. Hislop put any qualification on his intentions, keep a rein on his soaring genius. He should not complain if people take him seriously and proceed to compile a bill of costs. Nor can he escape the charge of profligacy because he alleges the other fellow, Mr. Coates, has outbid him. That is no defence, as a lawyer like Mr. Hislop must know. If it were, and if the counter-charge stated at £94,000,000 could be substantiated, the fact remains that the Government's policy ie put forward subject to the prudent limitation of finance. The Government does not assert in omniscient tones that, it "can and will do" many desirable things, though the heavens fall. It confines itself to the practicable. Years of stringency have enforced the lesson of responsibility and the necessity of paying respect to the problem of ways and means. To do things as financial conditions permit is wiser than promising an immediate seventy millions or, in this case, twenty-two. To cover up the financial tangle in which Mr. Hislop has enmeshed himself, the Democrat leader has been returning to his charges against the Government of socialistic tendencies. Many people could wish ho were in earnest in his condemnation of the collectivist trend that has in recent years been too evident in this and most other countries. Their difficulty is that Mr. Hislop only pays lip-service to the

ideals of personal independence and private enterprise. He condemns boards and official control and then, as the prime offering in his programme, proposes to set up a council (not another board) backed by anything from £8,000,000 to £20,000,000, which would initiate and control and direct almost everything. In the matter of spoon-feeding, another form of State Socialism usually grouped under the head of social services, Mr. Hislop proposes to go much further than the Government he accuses. This contradiction between profession and promised performance is astonishing, but not more so than Mr. Hislop's charge that the Government leans toward autocratic methods. If Mr. Forbes and Mr. Coates are erring by taking too much care for the people, and giving the social motive precedence over the individual, how can they also be arraigned for instituting the opposite principle of autocracy 1 Actually their party has it 3 root in a democratic organisation and its motive in political ideals of longstanding. The so-called Democrat Party, on the other hand, has been conjured out of nothingness by a professional political organiser. Its origin and development smell of the machine politics notorious in the United States. New Zealand wants none of it. Even the election baits so cunningly prepared fail to attract, because they are so patently artificial.