BRITISH WAY WANTED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27240, 17 November 1949, Page 8

BRITISH WAY WANTED

LIFE IN NEW ZEALAND FREE FROM STATE CONTROL PA MASTERTON, Nov. 16. Unprecedented scenes of enthusiasm were seen in the State Theatre, Masterton, to-night when the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland, addressed a meeting which filled the 900 seats in the theatre and overflowed to 200 in the lobby and outside. Mr Holland was given musical honours and cheers which drowned the booing from a pronounced minority of the audience. Mr Holland scored freely off interjections which enlivened the meeting. There were young people growing up in New Zealand to-day who had never known what it was like to be free, declared Mr Holand. An interjector: Freedom to starve? “ No, that is not so," continued Mr Holland. “We want to restore the British way of life and not that way of life in which the State will do everything for everyone. New Zealand, he added, was rich in experience in its experiments into Socialism. Mr Holland then asked his audience to examine with him the effects of the State taking over control of the air services, coal mines, the Onekaka steel industry and other services.

“ When land is acquired either compulsorily or by negotiation for the purpose of soldier settlement, it is paid for at 1942 values,” Mr Holland said. “ The National Party thinks that it is a grave injustice to farmers whose land is taken when everyone else is on present-day values. Ex-servicemen should be settled on land at 1942 values, but it was wrong to place the responsibility for that on the individual vendor. The difference between the 1942 and 1949 values should be spread over the community as a whole, and that was what the National Party as the Government would do. “The National Party is concerned with the drift away from the country to the towns and cities and every effort would be made to try to arrest that drift,” declared Mr Holland. “We will provide rural areas with facilities and amenities comparable to those in the centres of population. People in the country are just as entitled to higher standards of living as those in the towns and cities.”