“A SMOKE SCREEN”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26289, 22 October 1946, Page 6

“A SMOKE SCREEN”

MR FRASER ON SHORTAGES ELASTIC AND NATIONAL POUCY Shortages, which, he said, the National Party was talking so much about, were dealt with in light vein by the Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, m his address in the Dunedin Town Hall last night. He, questioned the right of the people of New Zealand to complain about shortages when the people of Britain and other parts of the world were going without so much. “ Our opponents have made a great hub-bub about the various shortages,” Mr Fraser said. “It is very annoying to be short of cigarettes and when you get them to be short of matches to light them. But we have more leaf tobacco in the country than ever before. We need the nimble fingers 4 o make it into cigarettes; it is all a matter of labour. The Opposition is trying to make a cigarette smoke screen about shortages to prejudice the people against Labour and blot out all the good that we have done. “ But the greatest efforts of the National Party,” Mr Fraser continued, “have been expended over the shortage of elastic. It is a very useful commodity I admit. (Laughter). But the pioneers managed to do without it. The National members seem to think that if there is no elastic everything will be allowed to fall to pieces. (Laughter). After all, Mr Holland and his colleagues are mostly midde-aged men and yet they all went into hysterics over the shortage of elastic. The people of this country are sufficiently enterprising to do without elastic and find a substitute Tor it. “ I might say that there will be sufficient elastic in the country to allow the Opposition to stretch out its very thin policy still further,” Mr Fraser added amid laughter.

Shortages were inevitable in the post-war period, Mr Fraser said. They were small compared with what other people in the world were suffering. He mentioned the severe rationing in Britain and how the people were bearing it cheerfully even after all they had gone through in the war years. New Zealand should be willing, and was willing, to go on putting uo with rationing for the benefit of the people of Britain, and in relieving the plight of peoples in countries affected by war and famine.