LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

Otago Witness, Issue 3584, 21 November 1922, Page 63

LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION

ENTHUSIASTIC MEETING AT AUCKLAND. VOTE OF CONFIDENCE. AUCKLAND, November 14. Mr T. M. Wilford (Leader of the Opposition) addressed a very large audience in the Town Hall last night, and was accorded a most enthusiastic reception. The Mayor (Mr J. H. Gunson) presided. Replying to criticism regarding his attitude to Sir Joseph Ward, Mr Wilford said it was monstrous that the cry of “Back to Seddon” should bring the suggestion thathe was going back on his former leader. He recognised that Sir Joseph was a man who would be of immense value to the country' on financial matters, if • only he could see his way to stand, and he hoped that, even if he did not stand, he would be able to give criticism of what was called Reform finance. Sir Joseph was a great statesman and a great financier, and of his Imperial feelings there could be no question. He dealt with the action of the Government in repealing the Second Ballot, and giving a promise to substitute something else, which never would be carried out by the Reform Party. He stood forProportional Representation, and the Liberal-Labour Party stood for Proportional Representation, and when they could not get that they hoped to get the necessary electoral reform by proportional voting. The Liberals had to fight, the Reform Party, but there was no policy to fight. He referred to the policy put out by Air Massey in 1911, but claimed that the promises then made had not been carried out. He referred to the plank of the 1911 platform, which stated that, the Reform Party aimed at the reform of the financial system, with a view to keeping borrowing within reasonable bounds and preventing wasteful expenditure. Mr Massey, the speaker said, had complained about secrecy regarding the cost of the £5,000,000 loan. “Why this secrecy?” he had asked. “It is bound to cause suspicion.” Now. Mr Massey announced last week that he was offered first £500,000 and then £1,000,000 on a shortdated loan at a rate that was confidential. We had to pay the rate, and we had every right to know what it was; yet Mr Massey said: “Why this secrecy? It is bound to cause suspicion.”—(Laughter.) The objective of the Reform Party and the Labour Party was to get rid of the Liberal Party. “We say absolutely,” said Mr Wilford, “that it would be a bad thing for the country if the Liberal Party was ever pushed out of existence. It was the party which made the country in the past," said Mr Wilford, “and can make it in the future. We say that the Reform and the Labour Parties have grasped hands and compacted to get us out if possible.” A Voice: That ; s a lie.

“I will prove,” said Mr Wilford, "that the Reform raft is Waterlogged and hardly fit after the elections to carry away the castaways who have to get, away.” The Leader of the Liberal Party next referred to the report of the Taxation Committee, and said that unless company taxation vvas reduced to ss. as suggested by the commission, or some amount fixed by financial advisers, there was troublq coming. He again referred to the 1911 policy, in which it was promised that there would be no extravagance in expenditure and an end put to waste, and said that as yet there was no real attempt to reduce expenditure and stop waste. When he left the National Cabinet with his old chief on August 2, 1919, there was a surplus of £15,000,000 in the Treasury. All of this had not gone, as some of it was in .soldiers’ land. —(Laughter.) The bright, brilliant idea of the Prime Minister to get back the 4i per cent, free of income’ tax debentures was not going to have the desired effect. The speaker said he had heard it. said that the taking of money for these debentures was an immoral transaction ; but in his opinion it was nothing of the kind, for it was done to make people with money place it at the disposal of the Government. Any man who had £5090 worth of these debentures and nothing else would pav no income tax; so that if he exchanged them for per cent, stock the country would merely pay him a little more, and he would still pay no income tax. He did not expect, however, that any company owning £IOO.OOO worth of 41 per cent, debentures would hand them in unless they themselves were to be handed in somewhere else. As showing that expenditure was not being reduced as promised in 1911, said Mr M ilford, the Prime Minister this year budgeted for very little below that of last year, and there was not the revenue to meet it. In 1913, the year after Mr Massey took office, the expenditure for the year was £11,825.864, and in the 1914 financial year it had jumped to £12,379.803. whip by 1918, the last year of the war, it: was National Cabinet, the total was £23,781,524, and as a Minister in the National Cabinet he had to take his share of responsibility from the time he joined in 1917 to 1919 when he left it. After 1919. when the thrift campaign of the Reform Party commenced, the expenditure for 1920 ' jumped to £28,068,000. Probably, said Mr Wilford. this was election year, and the money was needed to buy votes. In 1921. with all the talk of thrift and economy, the expenditure was £28.466.000, and this year it was still up to £27,938.000. with an estimated revenue of £26,250,000, and this was election year. A great many trusts and combines, miscalled associations, were beginning to take their toll of this country. He did not object to any combination" of firms if they were not exploiting the public, but when it saw trusts and combines creeping into the country to profiteer at the people’s expense the Liberal Party said a tribunal of investigation on the linos of the Commission on • Trusts in Great Britain in 1919 should be instituted. The first thing that should be done with profiteers was to abolish fines and make it imprisonment and then the oat. (Laughter.) The question had to be tackled. The Liberal Party claimed that there should be judicial inquiry into trusts or associations that controlled petrol, I banking, cement, tobacco, woollen goods, j etc., in this country. -(Applause.) Men wore convicted in Now Zealand in connection with the sale of a pot of vaseline and an alarm clock, but it seemed that the net was set only for little fish, and that tho big ones were let go. Auckland was the headquarters of the cement combine. The Liberal Party stood for a State bank and an agricultural bank as well. Tlie

president of _ the New Zealand Farmers’ Union (Mr M'. J. Poison) had characterised the proposal for rural credit associations as farcical, and an insult- to the intelligence of the executive of the Farmers’ Union. All round the country the small farmers were waking up to the fact that the MasseyParty was not turning out the friend of the farmer they had expected it to be. They recognised that its administration of the benefits of the Liberal Party was that of a foster father and not a real father.— (Laughter.) The old Liberal Party drove the piles of success and prosperity of this country. Something had to be done to help the farmers; they needecL.experimental farms, such as the model dairy farm at Stratford, where the average production of butter-fat was increased from 1651 b to 4021 b a cow. On the subject of shipping the speaker said that the Government, the producers, the exporters, and tho importers should get together and formulate a scheme to carry the country’s produce to tire markets o'f the world. Dealing with the railways, Mr Wilford said the board set up by the Prime Minister was not a joke—it was a tragedy. There were tw r o questions he wanted the Reform newspapers to answer. The first was that the railways ran 586,127 miles less this year than last year and 1410 more men were employed, and that the expenditure had increased, notwithstanding the fact that over half a million less train miles had been run, by £801.126. Where does the economy and thrift come in? The second question was how does it come about that expenditure had increased by £ r ’01.126 when extraordinary increases have taken place iir passengers’ and season tickets and goods tonnage? Where has the loss come about, and why have the railways lost nearly £1.000.000? At the conclusion of Mr Wilford’s address a vote of thanks and confidence, and expressing the opinion that it was time a change of Government was brought about, was carried by an overwhelming majority. Thursday, November 16. (Before His Honor Sir Robert Stout.) IN DIVORCE. Angela Taylor Warren v. Edwin James Warren. Petition for divorce on the ground of desertion. Mr Ongley (Oamaru) appeared for petitioner, who said she was married in 1906. In September, 1914, respondent left her without saying where he was going. He had not returned, and she had had to keep herself ever since. On a previous occasion she had had him brought back from Sydney. She understood that he went to the war. His Honor granted a decree nisi, to bo made absolute after three months. A CIVIL CLAIM. John S-evar; Wilson (Mr Ongley) proceeded against the New Zealand Express Company (the Hon. John MacGregor) on a claim for £1351 12s. The defendant company contracted in February, 1921, to remove plaintiff’s furniture and effects from Oamaru to Whakatane, but the goods were lost in the wreck of the Tasman in May. Plaintiff claimed that the company was liable as a common carrier, and, in the alternative, that it had contracted to effect insurance against fire and sea risks and had not done so. The defence was, first, that the contract did make the company liable as common carriers; and, second, that the company had not contracted to take out fire and marine risks, and had contracted insurance liability only to the extent of £lO on eaoli case in the case of breakage. After hearing legal argument his Honor reserved his decision