LEADERS AT VARIANCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24783, 6 December 1941, Page 10

LEADERS AT VARIANCE

BY-ELECTION CONTESTS OPPOSITION VIEWPOINT CHARGES BY MR .HOLLAND (P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Dec. 5. " On Wednesday I wrote to the Prime Minister offering to withdraw from the Bay of Plenty by-election all outside speakers from our side provided Mr Fraser did' the same," said Mr S.G. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, last night, referring to Mr Fraser's statement. " The reply, an 118-word urgent telegram, I have received from him quotes that proposal and intimates Mr Fraser's decision to make public certain correspondence which he himself made strictly confidential. "Such a decision" Mr Holland said, "is a flagrant breach of all the rules of etiquette and common fair play, and I am amazed at a man in his position stooping to such unheard-of tactics. The use of the names of gallant soldiers, including that of my friend and colleague, Brigadier Hargest purely for political purposes is indefensible and disgusting. Obviously the Government is afraid of losing the Bay of Plenty seat, and is prepared to use any method to avoid such loss. If the position is as serious as Mr Fraser says, then I repeat that a National Government should be formed immediately, so that our entire resources can be applied to the war effort, instead of the half-hearted effort that is now being made in certain directions), " Mr Fraser telephoned me at Gore." Mr Holland said, " and pleaded with me to withhold the announcement of our candidate until he and I had had an opportunity to confer. To this request I gladly agreed, yet within 36 hours the Labour Party broke the implied understanding by publishing the name of its candidate before Mr Fraser and I could possibly have met. In face of this clear breach of an honourable agreement the National Party was forced to announce its candidate. " The man responsible for contesting the Bay of Plenty seat is .Mr Fraser, who took no steps to see that the Labour Party candidate was not announced after asking me to withhold our announcement. Obviously the Prime Minister is in a panic at the prospect of losing the seat, but I did not expect. him.to stoop to publishing r .cdhndential correspondence that passed between himself and his political op.ppriehts, As I have already stated, it was Mr Fraser himself who marked ihis .first letter to?"me as confidential: Now He breaks his own agreement."

: brCONFIDENCE| (PAV WELLINGTON, Dec. 5. • The Prime Minister makes the following reply to, Mr Holland's statement:— \ > "I fail to understand Mr Holland's outburst, or what he is angry about. This is not the time to lose tempers; it is hot a time to endeavour to score political points. It is a time to try Ao avoid political party \ contests in the interests of the country and its war effort. I know that is the general sentiment of the people at large. ■ ■.. ■ "My letter of yesterday to Mr Holland, sent by me as a courtesy to him as Leader of the Opposition, was not a reply to his letter of December 3, although I took the opportunity when writing to mention its receipt. My letter of yesterday was Written for the purpose of again suggesting an agreement on the matter of by-elections. That Mr Holland should resent this is mystifying. Mr Holland is entirely wrong an saying that I,broke any confidence, iThe letter to\Which:;he refers was obviously my letter'to him dated November 24, not my letter of yesterday nor any of his communications to me. Hitherto in writing to Mr Holland On matters involving negotiations . I have usually marked my letters 'confidential,' but they were published later, along with his own. by mutual consent, because their publication was in the public interest. As a matter of fact, Mr Holland usually stresses the need of publishing j all such correspondence, and I always cordially agreer It is the right thing to do. ; ,

■ • New F»cWr» Btresaed., " When, however, Mr Holland did not respond to my suggestion for an agreement in respect of by-elections, he was asked to agree to the publication of the correspondence. For some mysterious reason he refused to agree. The effect of his refusal, as apparently seen by Mr Holland, would be not only to prevent the public getting the facts of my suggested agreement, but permanently to freeze them so that they could not be raised irf a future letter. Of course such an, attitude: is ridiculous and does not, even warrant any discussion. I felt .that the matter of an agreement in regard to by-elec-tions was far too important to be left, frozen, and I further felt the people had a right to.know what I had proposed. I accordingly' wrote another letter to Mr Holland yesterday embodying in large measure my former proposals, but stressing new factors, such as the vacancy in Temuka and recent war developments. That is the letter I handed to the press after Mr Holland had received it. ■ • "As the writer of the letter it is for me to say whether or not it should be considered confidential. It was my intention to inform the public as widely as •possible of the proposal I had made for an agreement between the Government and the Opposition Party for the purpose of. avoiding byelection contests, and I took the necessary steps to do so. Mr Holland's grounds for complaint are difficult to detect bay of Plenty Seat "In regard to the announcement of candidates in the Bay of Plenty electorate, it is true that I asked Mr Holland to arrange if possible that the name of the National candidate should not be announced until we had an opportunity of discussing the possibility of avoiding a contest and before the National Party was committed to one. The difference in the significance of the respective announcements of National and Labour candidates is that the former would immediately mean a contest, while the latter had no such result. The avoidance of a situation that would make a fight in the Bay of Plenty inevitable was the only object of my representations, but even if a mistake had been made in prematurely publishing the Labour candidate's name that is surely no adequate reason for the Nationalist Panv forcing a b—election contest or for rejecting the suggested agreement. ■ " ■ " I do not propose to refer to Mr Holland's references to the Government and myself being in a panic at the prospect of losing the Bay of Plenty seat beyond saying that I am an excellent prophet of election results when I see them on the screen on election night. "There is something more serious than the losing of a parliamentary seat; that is, losing one's head or losing one's temper or losing one's sense of proportion in the assessing of relative values at the present grave stage of the war. The former Labour member of Parliament for the Bay of Plenty, Lieutenant A. Gordon HuLquist, lost his life in our common cause."

AVOIDANCE OF CONTEST NATIONAL PARTY'S DESIRE (P.A.) CHRISTCHUBCH, Dec. 5. " There are two sides to every question, and it is just as well that the public should be fully informed," said Mr Holland in a further statement todsv» * "The postponement of a general election and a by-election cannot be corn pared. A general election can be postponed by -the Government with or without the concurrence of the Opposition, but a by-election cannot

be postponedi and any qualified person has a perfectly legal right to be nominated. »The National Party has done its best to avoid contests in the past by not nominating candidates for the Auckland West and Waitemata byelections, but in each case Independent candidates came forward and made an election necessary. When the National Party lost one of its members. Mr A. E. Jull, who represented Waipawa, the Labour Party had a good opportunity of avoiding a by-election, but instead it nominated an official candidate and forced a contest. "In the case of the Bay of Plemv vacancy, a by-election was inevitable in any case," Mr Holland said, "as at least two Independent candidates would have been nominated had the National Party not put up a candidate. At the Prime Minister's earnest and urgent request, I agreed to withhold announcing the name of our candidate until Mr Fraser and I could discuss the matter in the hope _ of avoiding a contest. I had in mind that a suitable non-party candidate acceptable to both sides might have been found, but before I could possibly see Mr Fraser the Labour Party broke the arrangement by announcing its official candidate. •' I have made an offer to the Prime Minister to withdraw all outside speakers from our side provided he does the same," Mr Holland concluded, "thus leaving the contest to the two nominated candidates and saving fuel time and money, as well as enabling several busy Ministers to go ahead with their war work. That—my offer —has been ignored."

THE TEMUKA SEAT NO LABOUR CANDIDATE (P.A.) WELLINGTON. Dec. 5. Mr Fraser announced this afternoon that the Labour Party would not contest the Temuka seat. The Prime Minister said that the National Executive of the party, and the party organisations in the electorate had agreed that in the present war circumstances it was in the interests of national unity and the country s war effort that the electorate should not be plunged into the turmoil of a by-election when people who were united in the war effort would be divided by the inevitable stirring up of party strife and bitterness. The country's war work was far more important, in the opinion of the Labour Party, than any possible party prospects. " I strongly support the decision not to contest the Temuka seat at this critical and trying time," said Mr Fraser. "and I can only hope that the National Party will reciprocate."