MONEY SYSTEM

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19881, 7 March 1939, Page 5

MONEY SYSTEM

HINT OF CHANGE

POSSIBLE LABOUR MOVE

QUERY BY MR. HAMILTON

SAVINGS OF THE PEOPLE

RIGHT TO INFORMATION

(Per Tress Association.)

PALMERSTON N., this day

How can the people of New Zealand maintain any confidence in the Government when, day after day, the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, or some of his colleagues makes statements obviously aimed to confuse the put>:rc mind and camouflage the aimless drifting and culpable negligence of itheir stewardship fo> the interests of all sections of the people?" asked the Leader of the Opposition, ithe Hon. Adam Hamilton, last night, in referring to the remarks of the Prime Minister, as reported from Wellington on Friday last, expressing the belief that the monetary system should be changed in order to make it fully' express increased production.

“No explanation can excuse the Labour Government for confusing the electors- by misrepresentations of. the financial position of the Dominion,’ said Mr. Hamilton. “During the year prior to the election in November, to retain office the Government practised tactics of deception. Fundamental Deception

“Whether Mr. Savage finds words in the language of his propaganda of confusion to further bewilder audiences into believing that he is a money magician matters little in the ultimate as the day when audiences will realise that ‘the whole performance is fundamentally a deception is approaching more rapidly 'than Mr. Savage's self satisfaction would suggest and the experience will be sufficiently cruel to make the people regret having paid high prices to see the show. “It is not the money system that is wrong, but the Government’s 'handling of it. In plain- fact the Government has lived beyond its means and has to call a halt.

“Labour itself commenced tightening the bellts of the people before Christmas and more and more receive the order to do so. That is Labour justice. ; View of 1935 Recalled “And this is the same Mr. Savage who, in the House in 1935, when asked if Labour wanted to manage the ■banking system, replied: ‘We are not mad enough for anything like that?

“The thousands of people who have savings invested in New Zealand have -the right to demand explanations of this threat. If Mr. Savage does not answer this question, he must be convicted. of hypocritical talk. “Mr. Savage cannot have the confidence of one person in the Dominion who has savings or investments until lie is candid about -the details of his money-system plans.”

“I am not going to apologise to the Reserve Bank or anyone else for my belief that the money system should be changed' in order to make it fully express increased 1 production,” said the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, at Wellington ora Friday on the conclusion of a visit to factories. “Unless we can get increased production and have it reach the people responsible for it, what is the use oi it all? The money system that we know has never done that.” Mr. Savage said there were certain people in banking institutions and elsewhere who thought the money system was all right and that there was no need for any change. “We are living in a changing age, and that should be anplied not only to the manufacture of things; and the production of other services, but to the system of exchange,” he said. Unless it were, we would go on with glutted markets and, he believed, in the fear of war, 'Decause we had riot the intelligence to distribute equitably as well as to produce.