LABOUR’S CORNUCOPIA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21940, 29 April 1933, Page 8

LABOUR’S CORNUCOPIA.

The faith of the Labour Party in highly-coloured appeals to the electors is at least persistent. Reliance is apparently placed upon the psychological effect on the credulous-minded of promises offered with arresting boldness and confidence. The addresses delivered by Labour candidates for office on local governing authorities have afforded more than sufficient illustration in point. The “ reforms ” that are promised in respect bf hospital administration furnish an ■ adequate sample of the fare upon which these exponents of the Labour platform, and aspirants to manage the city’s institutions, would feed their supporters. It is imperative, they assert, that there should be an alteration in the system that, allows a differentiation in the treatment of well-to-do and penurious hospital patients. What this differentiation may be is something of a mystery. It cannot surely be that the well-to-do patients pay and the penurious do not. The ground of Labour opposition to the idea of the community hospital, with pay-wards, has been that it would introduce differentiation. Now the suggestion is made, on no ground of which the public has any cognisance, that differentiation is already made in the treatment of hospital patients. The Labour candidates would insist on a considerable extension of maternity hospital services, overlooking apparently that funds have been raised for such a purpose subject to the provision of a subsidy from the Government which it is not at present in any position to pay. Above all, and here their appeal becomes particularly alluring, they clamour for a wholesale revision of the system of relief as dispensed by the Hospital Board, which means, of course, that relief would be extended on a much more generous scale. In this connection the Labour candidates become indeed illuminating. I 1 or the Hospital Board, they say, need never go short of funds. It has only to apply to the City Council for what it wants, whether it be £IOOO or £IO,OOO, and the Council must find the money. So they say. They are mistaken, however, for the law does not permit the Hospital Board to make demands upon the City Council or the other contributing bodies at odd periods throughout the year if, as a consequence of its own reckless expenditure, it runs short of funds. Nevertheless,

it is an unblushing programme of reckless squandering of funds that is proposed, based on the

erroneous assumption that there is no limit to the amount which the ratepayers may be called upon to provide to meet the requirements of a Hospital Board that is prepared to spend without stint. The candidates who ask to be given the opportunity to introduce such blissful conditions do not lack assurance. Lavish promises that could only be fulfilled by the imposition of intolerable demands on the ratepayers are easily conceived. Little intelligence is required to discern the futility of them