ELECTION POINTS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22720, 5 November 1935, Page 7

ELECTION POINTS

“We cannot do without the mortgagee,” commented the Minister of Finance, Mr Coates, at his Waimauku meeting. “ I would like to get him in my hands,” was the prompt interjection from the body of the hall.

“ I think the note to be struck to-day is ‘look forward,’” said Mr C. A. L. Treadwell, Nationalist candidate for Wellington North. “ The stage is set for prosperity, and I am satisfied the stage could never have been set for prosperity if the Government had done anything else than it 'did.”

“We are following in Seddon’s footsteps,” said Mr C. R. Dodd, Democrat candidate for Auckland Central, when discussing his party’s policy at a recent meeting.

When does a man become old? The question is raised by a statement by Mr T. J. Fleming, National Government candidate for Roskill, at a meeting which he addressed last week. “ I am an old man,” said the candidate when one persistent interrupter annoyed him. “I am 53, but,” he added, “there are probably not two men in this audience who could stand up to me yet. I am not afraid of any man who walks on shoe leather. Either with my tongue or fists I am not afraid of any man living of my age.”

“Unfortunately for Mr Hislop,” said Mr Savage, at an Auckland meeting, “ there are only two lobbies in Parliament, and unless he has a clear majority of his own —which is very unlikely—he must vote either to put the present Government into power or to put Labour into power. There is no middle course. It is quite clear from Mr Hislop’s own statement that any Democrat candidates that may he elected will form part of an auxiliary force to keep the present Government in power.”

“ Now, mind your step,” advised a

man when Mr Alan Donald, the Democrat candidate for Waitemata, was asked if - he would agree to a woman being given Cabinet rank. Mrs. Donald, who was on the platform with her husband, smiled. So did her husband, “ Yea, if I thought she was a fit and proper person, I would certainly favour a woman if she had the ability,” he replied. f The answer drew much applause from the many women in the audience.

The National Government candidate for Auckland West, Mr E. D. Stallworthy, told a recent audience that no Government had had such an unenviable task as that which had faced the National Government. To hear the criticisms, however, it would appear that the whole depression had been due to Mr Coates and Mr Forbes. The depression had been forced on New Zealand because it was a primary producing country.

If Labour is returned to power the broadcasting of parliamentary debates may be regarded as a certainty. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr M. J. Savage, assured a woman questioner at a meeting last week that his party was in favour of introducing the microphone into the House of Representatives, and would do everything possible to bring it about. “ The idea is absolutely ridiculed by the Government,” he said. “ They don’t’ want the public to hear the proceedings but only to read what the press sees fit to print.”

The Government had made mistakes, Mr C. E. Clarke, Nationalist candidate for Eden said last week, but that was only to be expected—the man who never made a mistake never accomplished anything. Faced with ruin, the- farmers •vyould have been forced to walk off their properties had it not been for the legislation' which the Government recognised was necessary if the country was to be saved. The Government had been charged with interfering with the sanctity of contracts, but if it were true there was something more sacred than sanctity of contracts, and that was the welfare of the people.

The Leader of the Opposition, explaining at Auckland the Labour Party’s proposal to co-opt the services of all members elected to support a Labour Government, said that Ministers would still be appointed as at present, and the prerogative of the Crown would be preserved. Rank-and-file members of the Government Party would, however, be associated with each Minister'according to their fitness for the various positions. The cost of government would not be increased, as the intention was to pool salaries at present being paid and to share according to arrangement. It had been said that Labour members were in Parliament for what they could get out Of it, but the proposal he had outlined would cost Ministers from £4OO to £BOO a year.

i “An Independent is a person who caunot agree with anyone else,” said the Leader of the Opposition, Mr M. J. Savage, in an address at Auckland. “ The pending political battle will be between the present Government and Labour, with a few well-meaning but helpless Independents thrown in.”

Speaking in Wellington, Mr J. A. Lee (Labour, Grey/Lynn) dealt with the political career of the Democrat organiser, Mr A. E. Davy. Mr Davy, he said, had' once been a barber, and Mr Lee’s experience was that a barber won every political argument. He put half an inch of suds on the customer’s face, and if the customer opened his mouth to disagree -he swallowed the suds- (Laughter.) But if one braved the suds, the barber flourished the razor.—(Renewed laughter.) So Mr Davy, who used to shave Gisborne, decided to shave New Zealand politically. He had known a measure of success. First he had worked for Coates and Confidence, then for'the £70,000,000, then for Coalition. He had spread political soft soap as successfully as he had spread shaving soap. — (Laughter.)

•' If the Opposition Party expects ever to obtain control of matters in New Zealand it will have to put before the country some sound commonsense policy * that will bear analysis, a pseudo-policy upon the details of which the party is in disagreement. The people of New Zealand are surely of sufficient importance to entitle them to expect that any party ashing for their suffrages should put before them a policy with something of value in it, and not merely try to delude them with shadowy will-o’-the-wisp schemes.” —Mr .T. G. Cobbe, Minister of Defence, at Feilding.

A not very flattering portrait of the type of representative sometimes elected to Parliament was sketched by Mr T. J. Fleming, National Government candidate for Roskill. “It is a curious thing,” lie said, “ that in sending men to Parliament we so often select them at haphazard. We take people who push themselves forward at their own estimation, and send them to represent us in Parliament. Sometimes those gentlemen are entirely without any experience or any learning on the subjects which would really fit them for their tasks. Very often it is the gentleman who can talk loudest, who can hit hardest and raise the most laughs at a political meeting who is sent to Parliament to represent the electorate.” In some cases some popular “ dud ” whom everybody liked and everybody laughed at was sent to do the business of the country.

The point of view—“ The troubles of this country began to take shape before 1931,” Mr G. T. Thurston (Labour candidate for Riccarton) said a few days ago, “ as interest payments for 20 years ended in 1934 amounted to £141,432,472. But our troubles began to take very formidable shape in 1931, when the Government went economy mad, and the first attack on wages was instituted. The Labour Party considers that the money system should be brought under the control of the State, and should not be allowed to remain in the hands of private monopoly, as at present.”

Dr G. J. Adams (Democrat candidate for Patea) outlines the purpose for which the Democrat Party was formed, under the following headings:—(l) To protect the Dominion from the legislative power of Labour, which was inevitable. (2) To protect moderate Labour from the Communistic regime, outlined in the avowed principles of Labour, as adopted at the annual conference of April of this year. (3) To retrieve Liberalism from the disaster it has suffered at the hands of Mr Forbes.

“ This is the last occasion that I intend to contest an election,” said Mr D. Stewart Reid, sitting Government member for Raglan, at Ohaupo. “ I believe that I have sat more hours in the House than any other member, and during my seven years'in Parliament I have not been absent one day through illness.”

When the Coalition Government went to the polls in 1931 asking for a blank cheque 'it did not even supply a policy in broad outline, let alone supply details. It asked for and was granted the right to adopt any methods that seemed to he 'desirable in dealing with unforeseen circumstances. When Labour ruled it would be the duty of the Law Drafting Office and. the Treasury, just as it was now, to express, in the necessary legislation, the financial policy of the Government. —The leader of the Labour Party.

“We have heard, a great deal of criticism of the Democrat Party, but I deem it a privilege to be associated with it,” said Mr Alan Donald (Democrat candidate for Waitemata), at a recent meeting. “In spite of the attempts that have been made by the press and others to wreck it, the Democrat Party has definitely arrived on the political field of battle. We have a man of ability, courage and human sympathy in Mr T. C. A. Hislop as a leader; at the back of him we have a body of candidates such as has never been presented to the electors before; .and, further, we have a body of workers devoted to the cause. The Democrat Party will win not only Waitemata, but the whole election, and will be the next Government of this country.”

Mr Coates, speaking at Kumeu, in his own electorate, referred to the exacting nature of his work during the past four years. People talked of a pleasure jaunt to England, he said, but actually he had had two of the most strenuous months of his life, giving all his attention to a problem of vital importance to New Zealand. All along the strain had been heavy. A voice: We will give you a rest next month.

“ If you did that you might be doing me the best turn you have ever done me,” said Mr Coates, “but I know the electors of Kaipara, and I think they will get the old horse in first again.”

“ What has the Government done to help the young people of New Zealand? ” asked Mr F. Jones during the course of a meeting at St. Kilda, last evening. It had sent a commission through the country, he said, and it had certainly set up a few committees. It had also visited a woodwork school at Christchurch and come back and told the House that the children should make mouse traps and rulers for the people of this Dominion. “ How long will it take to make enough of these articles for everybody ? ” he asked. “ The Government should have gone further and got the farmers to supply all the cheese for the mouse traps.”

The licensing of bookmakers, like the licensing of the liquor traffic, is purely a matter for the personal opinion and conscience of members of the Labour Party, according to what Mr J. W. Munro (Labour candidate for Dunedin North) told a questioner in the George Street Hall last evening. It was not a party matter, he said, but he thought it would have to be made a question of party policy. Personally he was not in favour of the licensing of bookmakers.

Mr A. S. Falconer, National Government candidate for Dunedin North, is one of those in favour of the abolition of the sales tax, but, as he stated in an address at Woodhaugh last evening, he is not in favour of its abolition until the budgetary position is such that will enable the tax to be done away with without , hardship. Most retailers, he S said, agreed that the tax was rather irksome, but _he regarded it as only a temporary measure which would have to be done away with by degrees.

The budgetary position of New Zealand to-day is something for which the people of this country should feel proud, according to Mr A. S. Falconei-, National Government candidate for Dunedin North, in an address at Woodhaugh last evening. He said that -it was pleasing to note that the Government had called a halt in its borrowing. “ For a small country such as this to emerge from a position such as we have experienced with such a small national debt is no mean feat,” he said. “In fact, the budgetary position of New Zealand to-day is the envy of many countries.”

“A mirage in the desert ” were the words used by Mr A. S. Falconer, National Government candidate for Dunedin North, to describe the policy of the Democrat Party, at a meeting at Wootlhaugh last evening. “It looks fine in the distance,” ho said, “ but as you approach it, it is likely to disappear into thin dir.” “Ambitious ” and “ impossible ” were two other words, he used when referring to the party’s policy.