REPUDIATION NOT FAVOURED

Southland Times, Issue 22993, 12 September 1936, Page 8

REPUDIATION NOT FAVOURED

VIEWS OF MR HARGEST (From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) Wellington, September 11. The necessity of dealing justly with mortgagees in all attempts to adjust mortgage liabilities was stressed by Mr J. Hargest (Nat., Awarua) during the second reading debate on the Mortgagors’ and Lessees’ Rehabilitation Bill in the House of Representatives to-day. Although Mr Hargest admitted that in certain respects the Bill would be welcomed, he emphasized that the time had come when repudiation must cease and when an effort would have to be made to check certain tendencies which ultimately would lead toward commercial and national demoralization. Exception to the continued criticism of certain Government members was taken by Mr Hargest. They appealed for the continuation of low interest rates, he said, and yet they refused to give the last Government credit forreducing mortgage rates from 6 and 7 per cent, to 4 per cent, and the bank rates from 7 per cent, to 4| per cent. The last Government had made a care-fully-planned effort to restore national stability and it deserved some credit even from their- opponents who were content to use much of the legislation which had been left for them. Perhaps the greatest difference between the present mortgage legislation and that passed by the last Government lay in the fact that the criticism of the present measure was far more generous than the Labour Party’s criticism of the previous Acts. The present Bill would certainly cut away a lot of the deadweight of debt with which some land was over-burdened, but it was to be hoped that it would mark the end of the adjustment legislation and that subsequently all values would be allowed to find their proper level. “There is a tendency to overlook the value of hard work in much of the recent legislation,” Mr Hargest added. “We are prepared on the one hand to write down mortgages and say that we cannot pay our way and yet on the other hand impose shorter working hours at increased wages. That position is not right. It must be remembered that the country has to earn its own standard of living.”