THE UNITED PARTY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 6

THE UNITED PARTY.

ADDRESS BY MR VEITCH.

REFORM’S METHODS ATTACKED.

NEW PLYMOUTH, July 30. The Reform Party and its methods were attacked by Mr W. A. Veitch in an address to about 100 people of the Taranaki electorate to-night. The speaker also dealt with several planks in the platform of the new party, and intimated that the party leader would be selected in the near future in Wellington at a meeting of candidates selected to contest seats at the election.

Three great problems facing the country to-day, said Mr Veitch, were land settlement, unemployment, and finance, which were so closely related that they must be taken together. Since coming into power the Reform Party had spent £107,000,000 in capital expenditure exclusive of £82,000,000 spent on the war, and that party had very little to show for it. The trouble was that the money had been spent on ) popular amenities, not in helping the farmers to increase production. Great sums had been spent to make good highways, with the result that motor competition had caused the railways to lose £780,000 last year. The huge expenditure on new railway works at Auckland and Wellington did not produce another box of butter or crate of cheese. It was not picture shows that lured the country , people to the towns, but the high interest rates, excessive taxation, and the loss of land values. The Reform Party’s schemes of rural credit, rural intermediate credits, and rural advances provided the farmer with everything he wanted except money, which was the only thing he did want. The whole system of finance required amending, said Mr Veitch, and the present system of commercial banking by the associated banks should be replaced by a triple system, including agricultural banking, industrial banking, and banking as carried on to-day by the chartered banks. All three were required. The present system catered really for the commercial interests alone, resulting in over importation when times were.good and unemployment when times were bad.

The new party proposed to establish agricultural banking on sound lines that would not inflate currency but would attract money to farm lands. The land policy must be aggressive. Rural lands should be divided into three classes— Class A, lands urgently required for subdivision; Class B, land suitable for subdivision, but not urgently required; and Class C, all other rural land. Money should be taken from the State Advances and Rural Credits funds to start a land settlement account in an agricultural bank. A group of settlers wanting to buy Class A land could purchase at a price agreed upon, or if the owner was not agreeable, the price to be fixed by arbitration. The land could then be either purchased by deposit on the amortisation principal of payment over, say, 30 years, or if the individual was without capital he could lease until in a position to pay a deposit on the purchase.

A further report was needed on the electoral system. Both the second ballot and proportional representation were worthy of consideration. Immigration was a good thing but must be stopped until unemployment ceased and then en-f' couraged only abing with a flow of British capital into the Dominion. The new party intended to do something in the way of humanitarian legislation, especially regarding workers’ compensation, but this must not be hurried or more unemployment would result.