The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1929. THE HUTT CONTEST

Southland Times, Issue 20949, 5 December 1929, Page 4

The Southland Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5, 1929. THE HUTT CONTEST

The general opinion seems to be that Mr Walter Nash will win the Hutt seat and past figures suggest that he will win emphatically. From the United Party side there has come the declaration that' in straight-out contests with Mr Wilford, Mr Nash carried the votes of the Reformers who -wished to register a vote against his opponent, but, unless the Hutt electorate is very peculiar, experience in other parts pf New Zealand rather disperses that notion. It is more likely that Mr Wilford secured the Reform votes. If, however, Mr Nash took some of the Reform votes and Mr Wilford the balance, the candidature of Mr Harold Johnstone is justified, because in

the re-arrangement of the voting both the United and Labour candidates will lose all that the Reform representative will gain. We do not look at the prospects in the light of the United Party’s contention, and it seems to us that Mr Nash will probably top the poll. In the contest it is noticeable that the Reform candidate is criticizing the financial policy of the Government severely, and his opponent’s answer seems to be that the Reform methods were worse, thus inviting the electorate to go for Mr Nash, who must be delighted by Mr Kerr’s way of getting out of an awkward situation. No citation of the Reform Party’s management will alter the fact that the expenditure has risen and that extra taxation has gone on with the object, not of wiping out a deficit, but of procuring more money to spend. The great part of the deficit the United Party reported was caused by payments which should have belonged to the first quarter of the present year, so that that part of the deficit was balanced by the corresponding saving obtained in the current year. If trade goes on as it is going now the Customs returns will supply enough to make good the deficit, and in addition the Government will have the extra revenue it has raised by additional taxation. Will there be a big surplus? Probably not, the money will be expended, because a big surplus would be too awkward to explain away. The super-tax on land is making its appearance, and farmers are discovering that the bland assurance that it would touch no more than four farmers in Southland is not being fulfilled. This is the experience all over the Dominion: the farmer is hit more heavily than the public suspects. The £60,000,000 advances scheme is dead, and Mr Kerr does not enjoy references to this plank of the United Party’s policy. The Government did put more money through the Advances Department, but it was not cheaper money, it was not money that fitted the specifications laid down in,the party’s election programme. Of the land settlement programme we have yet to hear. The term land settlement has been used freely, but the fruits of the Government’s operations have not yet been seen. We think the public will realize soon that the most effective implement for the settlement of people on the land is the stabilization of returns to the farmer on a level approximating more closely those secured by men in other branches of industry. The problem of increasing the returns to the farmer is a difficult one. It cannot -be solved by a few speeches and references to land settlement, and so the United Government is making slow progress with this part of its programme and Mr Kerr may find these failures, to say nothing of the primage duty, rather tough obstacles in the Hutt contest, obstacles too awkward for him to negotiate, but helpful to his opponent, Mr Nash, whose chief difficulty is to explain away the supine policy of his leader during the recent session, a policy which caused more uneasiness in the Labour Party than anywhere else because it made it appear bankrupt of any idea but opposition to Mr Coates, which is not enough to justify the Party in the eyes of its supporters. The 1929 session w* Labour’s worst, and Mr Nash has to overcome the bad impression it caused.