PLEDGES ALLEGED NOT KEPT

Southland Times, Issue 23307, 17 September 1937, Page 8

PLEDGES ALLEGED NOT KEPT

REPLY BY MR FRASER IN HOUSE (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, September 16. An election pledge made by the Reform Party in 1911 to institute a national health insurance scheme was recalled by the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) replying to the charge made in the House of Representatives tonight by the Leader of the Opposition (the Hon. Adam Hamilton) that the Government had not kept its election pledges. The allegation of the Opposition that the Government had not kept its pledges, Mr Fraser said, was another example of Opposition audacity. The Leader of the Opposition would have it believed that his Government was in the habit of putting its own pledges into immediate effect, but in 1911 the Reform Party, of which the Leader of the Opposition was a member— Mr Hamilton: I was not here then.

Mr Fraser: Well it would not be very much wrong if the honourable gentleman was not here now, but in any case in 1911 the party to which he belongs promised this national health scheme. “That was before the war,” interjected Mr Hamilton. Mr Fraser: Yes, certainly it was before the war—almost back to Adam in fact.

“Anyway the party to which the Leader of the Opposition belongs promised to investigate that scheme,” Mr Fraser added, “but 26 years have come and gone, and that pledge has not been fulfilled.”