THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1926. BOGEYS FOR ELECTORS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19763, 14 April 1926, Page 6

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1926. BOGEYS FOR ELECTORS.

Mb Holland, leader of tho SocialistLabour Party, evidently conceives that it is expected of him, whenever he has the opportunity, to draw gloomy pictures of the future which awaits New Zealand as' long as the electors think fit to keep the Reform Government in power. He is faithfully adhering to his allotted role in his speeches in support of the candidature of the Labour nominee for the Eden seat. He solemnly warns the public that the Government will "go in for wage reductions and increases in taxation." The Labour Party, to which all wisdom is vouchsafed, knows that these things are coming. The electors who voted for the Government last year will, they are told, simply get what they have asked for. The Labour Party, however, which these same electors treated with disrespect at the general election, will oppose to the utmost these wicked designs upon the peace of mind of the community. It is to be confessed that the intimation that the Labour Party will oppose increases in taxation, if any are proposed, although it is only Mr Holland and his party who passess any information or profess any knowledge on the subject, is somewhat curious. As the reductions in taxation that have been, made in the past few years were all resisted by the Labour Party in Parliament, it might have been supposed that it would see no objection to a reversal of the policy which was opposed by it, on grounds, certainly, that were not economically sound. But increases in taxation are never popular, and tht objection to them is not necessarily confined to the classes upon which the tax is in the first instance imposed, since, as experience has always shown, the incidence of it is inevitably distributed. The assertion, therefore, that the Government proposes —as the Labour Party positively knows, though the Government itself may be wholly without knowledge in he matter —that taxation shall be increased may, if only it is repeated often enough, have the effect of frightening some of the electors of Eden into supporting Mr Mason. Those among them who have short memories may have forgotten that a bogey which was produced at the general election was that, if the Reform Party were successful, there .would be a general reduction in wages. That bogey made a smaller impression than was hoped from it, but it has been dragged out once more by Mr Holland with the fresh ! bogey of increases in taxation to accompany it. Mr Holland has, moreover, produced another fearsome bogey, I which he has brought with him from Australia. Ho would "not be surprised," he said, in Auckland, if the Government brought in a Bill which would be a replica of the Commonwealth Crimes Bill. This measure, which Mr Holland described in terms that are an absolute travesty of it, will clothe the Federal Government with powers, such as it has hitherto lacked, to cope with organised movements that are directed to the creation of disaffection and to the paralysis of transport. It will give the Government of Australia the authority which, as it turned out, it did not constitutionally possess to deal effectively with situations of the character that confronted it last year. Mr Holland's stock of bogeys is running low when he relies upon a misrepresentation of the Crimes Bill in Australia in the hope that he may induce a panic vote in Eden iu favour of the Labour candidate.