THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES. MONDAY, DECEMBER 16, 1929. HIGH BIDDING.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20901, 16 December 1929, Page 10

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES. MONDAY , DECEMBER 16, 1929. HIGH BIDDING.

The electors of Hutt are being most assiduously wooed during the present by-election campaign, and the most ardent of the claimants for their favour is, without question, Mr Holland, the Leader of the Labour Party. It may be a matter for regret with Mr Holland that he is not politically in a position to fulfil all the promises with which he aims at convincing various sections of the Hutt electorate that it is of supreme importance that they should return the Labour candidate. On the other hand, however, he derives a certain advantage from the fact that, as he possesses no official responsibility and cannot, therefore, be called upon to act up to his commitments, he is enabled to bid the more highly and the more loudly for the electoral support. He is bidding with a freedom and a relish with which even his friends, the Ministers, whom he assists to maintain in power, cannot compete. By the reassumption by Sir Joseph Ward of the office of Post-master-general in one of those shufflings of Ministerial portfolios, which mean so little in present circumstances when the Prime Minister is so obviously the whole Government, his colleagues being merely office-holders, a gesture has been made to the dissatisfied officials of the Post and Telegraph Department that seems clearly to have been prompted by the by-election. But Mr Holland tells the public servants unhesitatingly that it is to the Labour Party only that they must look for what they regard as justice since the other parties have failed them in the past. An expression that was used, however, in a resolution passed last week at a meeting of postal officials—a reference to “ recent political intriguing ”—conveys the impression that not all the public servants have closed their eyes to the fact that a motion which was submitted by the Labour Party in Parliament a few weeks

ago, demanding a revision of the salaries of the lower-paid servants, was deliberately framed in terms that were bound to ensure the rejection of it. Mr Kerr, the United Party’s candidate for Hutt, has said that it was pre-arranged that this motion should be couched in the terms in which it was submitted. If pre-arranged, it could only have been between the United and Labour Parties, and this would indeed have been a pretty specimen of “ political intriguing.” As Mr Kerr’s statement has been denied by members of both the United and Labour Parties, it would seem that, with all his opportunity for access to accurate Ministerial information, he was incorrectly informed. It is, however, not only the public servants who are to have increased pay if the Labour Party comes into power, as it hopes to do some day. Increased benefits are to be showered all round. In particular, the amounts of the old age pensions and of the pensions that are paid to widows and to the blind are to be increased. The family allowance provision is to be made more liberal, especially in the direction of greater consideration being given to large families. There is to be a scheme of unemployment insurance, and the law relating to compensation for accidents is to be altered so that the injured worker will be paid full wages while he is unable to work. Mr Holland neglects to say how the funds are to be provided that are to admit of effect being given to all these proposals. He treats the question of finance as one of minor consequence, although the benefits that are offered by him would cost, in the aggregate, millions of the taxpayers’ money. And just because it is the taxpayers who will have to supply the finance, it should be evident that the persons who are to receive the benefits which Mr Holland in a happy spirit of irresponsibility is offering to the public will themselves, in some measure at all events, have to pay for these benefits.