PEOPLE DECEIVED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23858, 12 July 1939, Page 9

PEOPLE DECEIVED

THE GENERAL ELECTION GOVERNMENT’S “FALSE PRETENCES” PROMISE OF CONTINUED PROSPERITY (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, July 11. “We had a general election in October, and I would suggest that it was won by the Government on a policy of false pretences,” • said Mr F. W Doidge (Opposition, Tauranga), in his maiden speech made during the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives tonight. Mr Doidge spoke for about an hour, and his sallies drew applause at some stages from both sides of the House. “We were told that the prosperity of the country was due to the Government's administration, and we were given a promise that that prosperity would continue,” Mr Doidge said. “ The people were led to believe that they had only to return the Government to office and manna would continue to fall The people were lulled into a sense of false security. What happened? Within a month the Prime Minister told the people that he had to declare a state of emergency. Was there anything in that month that justified that change? I ask why the Prime .Minister could not have told the people before election day what he told them a month afterwards? He knows that if he had done so ho would never have been returned to the Treasury Benches. We have since had the admission of the Minister of Finance that for the last three years we have been living £ 13,000,000 above our income.” Reserves Dissipated Mr Doidge said that the sterling reserves left by the previous Government had been dissipated; there was an overdraft of £ 24,000,000 with the Reserve Bank, the post offices were skinned, and the Government had robbed every political henroost. There had been three bountiful years during the Labour Government’s term of office, but, like a swarm of locusts, it had eaten up those years. “ Mr Nash has gone Home seeking to solve some of our problems and we are waiting anxiously and a little wistfully,” Mr Doidge continued. He traced in detail the intimate relations between the Dominion’s welfare and the British market for New Zealand’s primary produce, and said that after being a Freetrade country for 100 years Britain had introduced Protection for her manufacturers in 1932. There was now a move to give the British farmer the same fiscal justice that the manufacturer had received. Agriculture was still Britain’s greatest industry, being greater than the coal, cotton and steel industries combined. The newly-appointed Minister of Agriculture (Sir Reginald DormanSmith) had promised to restore British agriculture, which was not paying and if he was to succeed someone had to suffer.

“ I believe that the Home market can take all that the British farmer and the Empire producer can send, but there is not room for the foreigner as well,” Mr Doidge said. " If. however. New Zealand loses its London market the Dominion’s £60.000,000 worth of produce annually will become so much flotsam and jetsam. The People Antagonised “ It is at such a time as this that the Government talks about insulation,” he said, “ and seeks to pursue a policy that antagonises the people at Home and endangers our position on the London market. We have not heard so much of it lately, because they have found that it is sheer nonsense. “ I suggest to the Prime Minister that even now the position could be righted if the Government would admit that it is time to call a halt that it cannot spend its way to prosperity, that the persecution of capital should cease, and that the development of the primary industries of the country must be its first consideration.” Mr Doidge said. “It is foolish to believe that we are not relying mainly and will not rely for a long time to come on the products of the soil.”