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REFORM v. LABOUR.

CLEAR-CUT ELECTION ISSUE.

MR HOLLAND’S DECLARATION.

PALMERSTON N„ July 30. The Leaner ot the Opposition \Mr H. E. Holland) addressed an exceedingly large audience here to-night. In his opening remarks Mr Holland made reference to the recent rumours associating his name with the Dunedin Sou'.' constituency. He said that none of the . papers publishing ' these rumours had approached him to ascertain whether they were true or otherwise. The allegation as to promises made by himself affecting the Buller electorate were wholly without foundation, and were evidently base ’ on the situation which arose in 1918 in connection with the Grey electorate. He had been selected without opposition for the fourth time as the Labour candidate for the Buller electorate, and had no intention of leaving that constituency. Furthermore, he had never irt any time received a request to allow his name to go into the Dunedin South selection ballot. He wae confident that Dunedin South would be among the seats won by Labour this year. Mr Holland dealt with the position of the parties in Parliament and in the electorates, claiming that the real fight was between the ’Labour Party and the Reform P-rty. He said that on almost everj no-confidence motion within recent years the Nationalists had voted in support of the Government. Since Mr c .zitos became Prime Minister there had been 57- divisions of what might be termed front-rank importance. In 38 of these the Nationalists had voted either solidly or in a majority with the Government. Indeed, in 22 of these 38 divisions every Nationalist present had gone into the Government lobby. In 15 divisions a majority of the Nationalists had voted with the Labour Party, and in three divisions they had split evenly, onehalf voting with the Government and the other half with Labour.

The speaker quoted statistics to prove that aggregation prevailed under the Reform Party's land legislation, and also to show that while the farmers had been promised the freehold, a’l they had got was a mortgage-hold of threatening dimensions. Now that statistics were being used adversely to the Government, he said, they found that pages of statistical information, which hitherto had been published year by year, were now being cut out of the Year Book and the monthly Abstract of Statistics. This was so in the case of the figures relating to the sum total of registered mortgages, the deposits in the Post Office Savings Bank, and (according to Mr Polson) the Public Debt. The grounds for this policy were stated to be that the figures were misleading. It had taken the Reform Party 16 years to find this out. Mr Holland made the charge that a financial dictatorship ruled in New' Zealand, and that the Government’s policy was considerably influenced by this dictatorship. After repeated attacks by the banks on the Post Office Savings Bank the Government decided to reduce the maximum deposits on which interest wo. 1 be paid, and this was eventually done, with the result that some millions of money were driven from the 1 oet Office Savings Banks tc privatelyowned banks, and the Government was eventually under the necessity of borrowing at up to probably 54 per cent., money which it ’ previously "S ld at r cent The only possible effect of this policy was to make money dearer . The State Advances office had also been made a subject of attack and within one month of the 1925 victory of Reform the rate of interest on State Advances loans to farmers and workers had been lifted from 44 to 5j per cent. 111,3 " as followed by a restriction of advances, which in 1928, as compared with J? non nnn aat m reducti f n of "ell over £1,000,000 in the case of the workers and nearly £1,500,000 in the case of the farmers. The banks had made use of the Welfare League to distribute newspaper propaganda against the Post Office Savings Banks, the State Advances office, the Public Irust, and other State institutions of a socialistic character.

Dealing with rural credits on the fines ot his Address-in-Reply speech, Mr Holland reminded his hearers that on July t . ed , ln the House that only about £2,10,000 had been subscribed by the publie and that the whole of the balance had been underwritten by the Bank of New Zealand at £93 10s, which was £1 per cent better than the price at which the bonds were offered to the public. The Minister had declined to answer these questions when they were put to him in the House, and it was not until three weeks had elapsed that an admission was made that the issue had been underwritten at £93 10s; but the Minister claimed that the arrangement for underwriting had been made before the bonds were issued. There had been a remarkable silence on the part of all but a few newspapers in this connection, and also with respect to the action of the banks in instructing their managers that the sale of rural bonds was not to be pushed. - Referring to the position in Western Samoa, Mr Holland said that the Government stood condemned for its line of action in connection with the radiogram sent from Samoa to the New Zealand Herald on March 13. After the Government had satisfied itself that the message was a libel on the Samoans and a falsehood in every other respect, and after it had administered a reprimand to a minor official for his share of the responsibility for the false message, the Government then deliberately held from the public all information relating to what had been done, and let it be inferred that, after all, there might be something in the sensational statements contained in the radio message. Subsequent admissions dragged from the Government on' the floor of the House constituted a complete justification of the attitude of himself and colleagues in regard to this incident. Mr Holland concluded his. address by a statement of the Labour platform,

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Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/OW19280807.2.47

Bibliographic details

Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 15

Word Count
999

REFORM v. LABOUR. Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 15

REFORM v. LABOUR. Otago Witness, Issue 3882, 7 August 1928, Page 15