REPLY BY MR SAVAGE

Southland Times, Issue 22962, 7 August 1936, Page 8

REPLY BY MR SAVAGE

INDUSTRY UNABLE TO FULFIL ORDERS NEW SYSTEM SOUGHT (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, August 6. “My friend Mr Coates has been saying that Ministers have been going round the country administering doses of soothing syrup. That is a desirable change, in any case from the castor oil period of the last Government,” said the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) when speaking in the House of Representatives to-night in the debate on the Financial Statement. Reference had been made to the policy of the Government tending to cripple industry, Mr Savage said, but he had been informed reliably that on all sides industry was “going for its life.” In fact, the report was that at the moment, in spite o£ all the disasters mentioned by Mr Coates and other critics, industry was unable to fulfil all its orders. Mr Coates had also talked about reserves, but Mr Coates had cleaned up all the reserves of the country long before his term of office was ended. Wherever there was a threepenny bit lying about, somehow or other it had been picked up. Then Mr Coates had talked about pensions, but it was a curious thing about his speech that he had evaded any mention of the invalidity pensions provided for in the Budget. The Budget outlined pensions proposals to cover approximately 20,000 persons who were previously not recipients. Redistribution of Incomes.

“Any undue claims made on one section of the community must be made only at the expense of another section,” said Mr Savage, when dealing with the Government’s policy for the welfare of the people. “I have heard people say that all we have to do is to get the printing machine to work, but that is not going to solve the problem at all. It is a redistribution of the incomes of the people that is needed. Perhaps there are many ways of arriving at that conclusion, but the objective should be clear. If some have more than their share, they can get it only at the expense of others. Other critics believe that all we have to do is to increase the money in the hands of the people all round. Well, if we started out to do that we would all be dead before we could accomplish it. “The thing we have to do is to see to it that the buying power is in the hands of the community,” said Mr Savage. “The Government has to see that the benefit of the increased productive capacity of the machine is available to the people. That benefit can come only lay shorter hours of work and higher incomes. I am not thinking about running a printing press nor of smashing the financial system. I am thinking about transforming the whole thing, so that it can be the servant of the people, and not the master.” Men on Sustenance. Mr Savage said that it had to be admitted that the Government had not yet put all the unemployed into useful labour, but it was also true that toda ythere were thousands of men getting sustenance who did not have it before the advent of the present Government. It was the Government’s desire that all the unemployed should be at useful labour, but it was impossible to do everything in five minutes. Members of the Opposition might be able to do something to help the Government in that direction. “We have a job to do and we are going to do it,” continued Mr Savage. “The member for Kaipara criticized our taxation proposals, but if we are going to cut down taxation, and, consequently, expenditure, we will never get anywhere. He also wondered whether we could afford to use the machine, but if we are to go forward in the modern competitive race we must use it.”

The solution of the problem of unemployment, the Prime Minister continued, was to get the people of New Zealand fitted into industry and service, and they would only be fitted in when the hours of labour were reduced. Why should one man work 50

hours a week while another looked on and drew sustenance? “We have not done nearly as much as we would have liked to have done,” concluded Mr Savage, “but there is no doubt that we will do the job all right. When we have to escape over a back fence we will hand in our resignation.”