The Political Campaign

Southland Times, Issue 19553, 6 May 1905, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Political Campaign

(N.Z. Herald). Th'e success which has attended Mr Massey’s meetings in- the South Island, ’ where his championship of honest administration and reorganisation of the existing financial muddle has excited general appreciation, has drawn from Mr Seddon anothei of his evasive “ replies.” As Mr Massey very conclusively showed at the great Drill Hall meeting, it is quite impossible for the Premier to confine himself to the spirit and

meaning of any criticism directed against his policy and methods. According to Mr Seddon, it is ** tampering ” with old age pensions to suggest that they be made universal or in some other way more in keeping with the “pensioner” pi inciple. and it was “ opposing the Advances to Settlers Act ' for a m> mber returned on a pledge to oppose borrowing to fulfil his pledge while advocating that the public Savings Bank should make advances upon landed security. These are instances of Mr Seddon's - replies,” but the most instiructive are the efforts which he makes to persuade the public that his administration does not offend by transferring votes fiom one account to another, that the Auditor-General has never been improperly interfered with, and that everything financial is as it ougnt to be. In the North we have had too much and too bitter experience of the meaninglessness of a sum of money being set down by Parliament for specific expenditure in a district frowned upon by Mr Seddon to attach any weight to the sort of explanation that would win thunderous applause in Westland. It is true that the system under which it is possible is bad, as is the system under which public service appointments can be dispensed by favouritism, not by merit. But it is absurd to expect reform from Mr Seddon, who has taken the most extreme partisan advantage of the freedom in administrative matters entrusted by the colony to its administrators, and has made our colonial administrationl to diverge from all traditional British procedure and tai-.e to itself the colour and customs of Tammany Hall. As he told the North himself : If a constituency returns a Seddon representative to Parliament it may get public money where a constituency which returns an anti-Seddon representative may not. After this it is not surprising that we do not take seriously Mr Seddon's professions of political iinmaculateness.