UNREDEEMED PLEDGES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23514, 31 May 1938, Page 10

UNREDEEMED PLEDGES

The excuse which the Minister of Labour has advanced for the violation by the Government of its leader’s promise to the electors to reduce the rate of exchange has, at least, the merit of frankness. Mr Armstrong says in effect that the consequences of a reduction in the rate would be so serious that the Government cannot face them. He told the electors last week that the party to which he belongs had opposed the increase in the rate because hundreds of people in New Zealand would, as a result, be forced into bankruptcy. The rate having been raised, however, another lot of people would, he said, be confronted with bankruptcy if the Government attempted to lower the rate suddenly. The argument both against increasing the rate and against reducing the rate from its present level does not lack soundness. But Mr Savage and his colleagues either knew or did not know of the existence of this argument when they undertook, prior to the general election in 1935, that they would lower the rate if they were afforded the opportunity to do so. If they did not know of it they were convicting themselves of a lack of knowledge of the subject. If they did know of it they were guilty of flagrantly deceiving the business public. From whatever aspect their promise is regarded it cannot possibly be described as creditable to them or to their party. The violation of this pledge constitutes one only of various instances in which the Government has betrayed the public by its neglect or refusal to honour undertakings that were given by it on the platform. More glaring than the omission to reduce the exchange rate—which, by reason of its own legislation, it cannot possibly reduce now—has been its refusal to abolish the sales tax. The electors were encouraged to believe that this tax would be removed as soon as the Socialist Party had the chance to abolish it. In his first Budget, however, presented eight months after the Government came into office, Mr Nash calmly expressed his conviction that the yield from the sales tax, which was £2,462,601 for 1935-6, would be increased in 1936-7. He carefully avoided any reference to the undertaking to abolish the tax. In his second Budget he cynically observed that this tax, which had yielded £3,044,613, was “now one of the major items of revenue.” As it produced £3,499,000 in the past financial year, it may be agreed that it has become a tax of great value to the Government. It was, however, definitely, promised that it should be abolished and it is simply childish on the part of the Government, when it is reminded of its pledge, *to shelter itself behind the statement that it did not introduce the tax. Another promise by the Prime Minister of which .less is heard was that his party, if it were placed in power, would abolish the Legislative Council. Since the Government has stuffed the Council full of its own supporters, this is a promise which it must find it exceedingly convenient to ignore. There were other pledges which, in their confidence in the credulity of the public, the leaders of the Government made at the last general election that have been either forgotten or deliberately broken by them. Their path during their whole period of office has, in fact, been littered with unredeemed pledges.