OPPOSITION FUDGE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 7943, 28 October 1911, Page 4

OPPOSITION FUDGE

Unless Opposition candidates have something very different to put forward in tho way of argument than anything produced so far, we fear the coming elections are going to be the reverse of exciting. The public is familiar to the point of weariness with the views of Opposition .candidates for the local seats. In other parts of the Dominion gentlemen who are asking to bo allowed to join the Conservative parly are offering the electors no useful ideas. Mr Monckton (who has beaten Hr Byron Brown for first place in the affections of the Opposition executive) has, for instance, been tolling Otaki electors the old, old story that they are the most heavily taxed martyrs in the wide world, and that the national debt is a terrible thing to contemplate. Wo are told that the candidate quoted figures to prove that no other country imposes such heavy Customs duties. It is not stated where he got the figures, but lie certainly gave the Government a very bad name in the approved Conservative style. It was the same old rigmarole we have heard for years from men bankrupt of ideas and blind to facts, but wo have to admit that in one respect Mr Monckton introduced a little varitation when he declared that the present Government hod. put taxation on sugar and coffee! It was, in fact, his friends the Conservatives who taxed those commodities, as well as rice, salt, dried fruits and many other necessaries of life. Liberal Governments took those taxes off, and thereby saved the consumers—that is. the masses of the people-hundreds of thousands of pounds. Between the two Opposition candidates, Otaki electors are having a strange entertainment, Mr Byron Brown told them they were '‘menaced" by tho land lax, but fails to produce one agriculturist prepared to support that view; and now Mr Monckton is trying to induce them to believe they are paying heavy taxation on articles that are dutjr free. Our friends must bo in a tad plight if this Mud of stuff is their best. Conservative criticism of the Customs tariff must always act as a boomerang. The Conservatives taxed all imported food over 20 per cent.; the Liberals have brought these duties down to less than 4 per cent. The Conservatives charged JC 24> Os 3d on every .£IOO worth of imports, and by last year tho Liberals had reduced the duties to .£l7 X3a 4d per £IOO. Thus, if the Customs tariff is heavy now, as Mr Monckton declares, it was 25 per cent, more burdensome when the party he supports was in office. Mr Monckton- ought to be aware of this, but we are afraid anybody-who does not know that sugar and coffee are duty free is altogether hopeless unless ho keeps to the old, approved fudge, poor stuff as it is, about bribery, nepotism and "spoils.''