POLITICS AND MAJOR DOUGLAS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21544, 16 January 1932, Page 14

POLITICS AND MAJOR DOUGLAS

TO THE EDITOB. Sir,— Mr Rhys, writing all the way from Brisbane, on credit merely gives the same quotations that we have heard so often from local advocates. We have heard them all before—from M'Leod, M'Kenna, Hawtrey, and the Macmillan Report—as if there were some magical value in passages torn from their context, unexplained and without full references. If Mr Rhys had read the correspondence he would have found questions on the implications of his quotations and as yet unanswered by local authorities. My reason for writing, however, is to point out the absurdity of rejoicing at the heavy vote of 6419 in a total of 49,941 votes obtained for the Lilley electorate,

when the main advocates of ths Douglas credit proposals in Great Britain have repudiated the possibility of carrying out their proposals through parliamentary action. The New Age reprimanded the Australian advocates for suggesting that a Bill could be passed in a few days establishing the Douglas ideas. Mr John Hargrave writes thus: —“ It is open to question whether any democratically constituted government could pass a. really effective Social Credit Act ‘in less than 24 hours,’ or even in as many years. As a reply to the question, ‘How are you going to get the Douglas proposal put into operation?’ this idea of passing a Bill through Parliament, as a preliminary step, seems to me to show that the / mechanism of modern democratic government in relation to modern financial teaching has not been analysed with sufficient care. But supposing such a Bill could be passed, is it seriously believed that ‘in three months the Douglas technicians could have the scheme in operation?’ The truth of the matter is, of course, that in three days a democratic government that passed such a Bill would find itself bankrupt, and its Douglas technicians helpless, unless it did what no elected representative body can. do. It wounld have to transform itself in less time than it takes to say ‘knife! ’ from a deliberative into an autocratic extraconstitutional dictatorship. It can be shown that a parliamentary formation cannot change itself into an effective action-group for dealing with a. financial emergency along the lines of social credit.” There does not seem much hope there. If social credit supporters agree with those words from a recognised authority,, that only through dictatorship (and probably armed revolt) their ideas can be car Tied out, the whole discussion seems rather irrelevant to the present situation in New Zealand.—l am, etc,, Llotd Ross.