POLITICAL REPORTS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19038, 11 June 1936, Page 5

POLITICAL REPORTS

LABOUR'S GOOD HEARING OPPOSITION VIEW LEANINGS OF THE PRESS (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, (bis day. Following a long series of Labour speakers who complained to the House about the inadequate reporting of Labour views in the newspapers, the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forties, Leader of the Opposition, called them very ungrateful.

These members, he said, had received tlattering notices, hut look at the reports of those opposed to the Government. The Opposition was given tabloid treatment, whereas everything the Prime Minister said was published in extenso. If under these circumstances the Prime Minister thought that the newspapers were not giving him a fair run, what would he expect from broadcasting. So far as the Opposition was concerned, he saw little hope for them on the radio if the. Leader of the Government wanted all messages of a tlattering character to go over.

Mi-. Ravage, he said, seemed to object very much to newspaper criticism, to which he was extremely sensitive, but he would recall for the Prime Minister's benefit an incident which happened when he (the speaker) first came to Parliament, and one of the leading members of the Opposition boasted that he never troubled to prepare speeches because he could always take the leader of a prominent Opposition newspaper.

"BOUQUKTS ALL THE TIME" "But if the present, Opposition have to rely on the leading columns of the press ' for criticism of the Government," added Mr. Forbes, "it would be very mild. They have clone their best to present the Government's legislation in a most favourable light, but the Prime Minister cannot expect to be receiving bouepjets all the time." "I've said just the opposite," corrected the Prime Minister. "I have said that if the press was with me all the time, I would think there was something wrong with me and with them, but I think'l ought to be right sometimes. (Laughter). "One can only laugh at the suggestion of the Leader of the Opposition that the newspapers have turned over to the Government," remarked the Postmaster-General in his reply to the debate. lie would regard such a phenomenon as to-day's joke, and the Labour Party would certainly have to look at itself.

Mr. J. Carr (Lab., Timaru): There would be hope for the world then. (Laughter).