The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1925. A REFORM PROGRAMME

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12076, 2 March 1925, Page 6

The New Zealand Times. MONDAY, MARCH 2, 1925. A REFORM PROGRAMME

Our surmise stands - confirmed.. The Reform Party is organised. . -The work of the organisation is controlled by an executive committee, called the “organising executive” of the ..Reform Party. Of this body the Hon. A. D, McLeod, Minister, for Lauds, is the chairman, and there is an executive in every electorate. On Friday this executive met, and the chairman . took the opportunity, of stating the: party’s programme. This is simplicity itself., The party aims primarily at “stable government,” and that objective it will make every legitimate effort to attain, the best and strongest of these being , the effort to, prevent the extreme' ■Labour Party from reaching the Treasury benches. • Every member of the party is expected to use his vote at the general election accordingly, and’ the business of the. organisation is to instruct the- party in the performance of this duty. This simple plan is not hampered by any statement of principles, and not confused by any pledges or promises. And the simplicity of it is equalled by its vagueness, which ignores everything of Importance in the direction of, the country’s affairs. “Keep out the Reds!”' is the slogan of the party’s political war. The tacit excuse for its general vaguenese is that New Zealand is in grave danger, and the Reform Party is to be its chosen saviour. The electors of the Dominion are invited to put their trust in this volunteer saviour, without considering the past, or any part Of the past, of the saviour party. They are 1 expected not to ask questions. They are to take the Reform Party at its own valuation asthe only possible saviours of the State. If, therefore, the Reform ■ Party gets to power on the basis of thie valuation, this self-presented certificate of ability to govern the country they are to save, it will, a free hand to do as it pleases. The theory is that, so long as the “Reds” are kept out,*, nothing, elsematters a - straw. Land, finance, arbitration, factory., ; control, immigration, public works, the public debt, the . public health, recreation, comfort, , the . (equality of opportunity for 'all—about 1 these things the Reformers, victorious at the polls, will arrange according to their fancy when they dominate Parliament. It is a curious position to ask for, and the Reformers are deliberately asking for it. It is a position of constitutional danger and business absurdity. But it is the usual consequence of a policy of negation.. The need of the hour is construction, the tackling of grave problems, the initiative that .marks the path ol progress and the, capacity for making good along those lines. But a policy of negation avoids all these things of responsibility ' and capacity,, generosity, justice, and ’ judgment. Its principle is agnostic, its policy is drift; it must live on the credit of having saved the country from something whicE might once have been. To have saved the. craft from a possible

danger is not a good title for permission to-let her drift into a thousand perils. A policy of negation is a rotten prop for any party to lean on. These champions of stable government seek to strengthen - it by branding their Liberal opponents as capable of helping the “Reds” to establish instability of government, and even of being ready at a pinch to do so. That is an old political slander. The slander has been many times refuted, not only by the word of honourable men, but also both by the course of events and by the history of the Liberal Party. The word is good enough of itself. The events which support it are those which followed the fall of the Liberal Party from power, duo to the firmness with which it drew the s lme against the tendency to drift into the “Red” waters of anarchy. In the face of this body of honourable denial, supported by a multitude of facts widely known and universally recognised, we have this old slander revived and dressed up 'to make a headline in the Reform Party programme. The idea that the electors of the Dominion can he captured by such a transparent device is amazing. The reply of the Leader of the Parliamentary Liberals is as sound as it is brilliant. This “stunt” of the Reform Party, he says, is as worn out as the-party itself. Its biting truth is proved by the Reform policy of negation, supported by a transparent device. A party which, after a dozen years of power—less its share of power in the days of the'war—coalition—lias to resort to a policy of negation thus badly supported as an appeal to the country, must he worn out. Its programme signs what ought to be both its deserved death-warrant and its contemptuous epitaph. For this it scarcely needed the categorical and emphatio denial with which' the Liberal Parliamentary Leader followed his deadly ' epigrammatic thrust. As, for stability of government, the Liberal Governments of this country have, made a great record of stable government. Their stability was outstanding in ways beneficial all round, and generally progressive.. Its record was established in the teeth of the men who now place stable government so far above all things on earth as to make their theoretical belief in it a title to despotic power without the pretence of a guarantee against aimless drifting towards all possible dangers but one. And even that one—the danger of extremist ascendancy—must loom large before the Reform programme of negation and impossible; drift, for the simple reason that disaster may be .the forerunner *and friend of anarchy. The best why to encourage instability of government is to launch a policy of negation and irresponsible drift, based on the' alleged backslidings of opponents. *The programme of the Reform Government, therefore, is the best encouragement to the instability which it professes its desire, to avoid.