FARMERS’ LEGISLATION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20288, 22 December 1927, Page 12

FARMERS’ LEGISLATION.

MR HAWKEN’S" RECENT STATEMENi. REJOINDER BY MR POLSON. (Special to Daily Times.) WANGANUI, December 21. Mr W. J. Poison lias made the following reply concerning the criticism of Mr 0. J. Hawken (Minister of Agriculture): “ I have seen only the telegraphed summary of Mr Hawken’s speech, but it con. tains some extraordinary statements. As he appears to have devoted most of it to a criticism of myself I may be pardoned for referring to these matters. For example, his proud boast (hat ‘ his department passed 13 Bills during the session,’ seems to me particularly comical. Quantity at the expense of quality is always a symptom of legislative decadence. In one breath both Mr Coates and Mr Hawken declare that the country is on the high road to prosperity, and in the next Mr Hawken says, ‘ We (New Zealand) could recover if w e exported a great deal more than we imported.’ Exactly, but unfortunately we have been reversing the process and are still importing, according to the latest Government figures, a great deal more than we export.

“ I do not know what the misstatement was that was made in Auckland and again at Eltham to which Mr Hawken refers, and which was not corrected by me. 1 have not been in Auckland, and cannot be saddled with any statements which are not my own. The figures quoted in regard to agricultural production, which Mr Hawken says are wrong, were the official figures supplied by his own department. If they are wrong Mr Hawken ought to know.

“ In reply to his statements about rural credits, including the assertion that longterm bonds are selling rapidly in London, I may say —(1) That Mr Coates him. self recently told me they were going to dispose of them in New Zealand; (2) thSt neither the associated banks nor the Rural Credits Board, of which I am a member, had heard as late as yesterday of any sale of rural credits bonds in (London. I may say that I publicly challenged Mr Hawken to debate with me on the public platform the whole question of th e Government’s action in ’passing the rural credit legislation in defiance of the commission’s report, but I have had no reply from him. Th e charges I have made are so serious that I would have imagined that Mr Hawken would have been glad to let his constituents be the judges. I'’ 1 '’