NATIONAL PARTY CRITICIZED

Southland Times, Issue 25549, 18 December 1944, Page 4

NATIONAL PARTY CRITICIZED

ATTITUDE TO WAR REGULATIONS

The attitude of the National Party to the war regulations and controls on public platforms and in Parliament was discussed by the Hon. T. F. Doyle, M.L.C., in an address to the North Invercargill branch of the New Zealand Labour Party op Saturday night. Mr Doyle said the National Party and its leader, Mr S. G. Holland, had been condemning on every platform in New Zealand the war regulations and controls, saying that they were unnecessary, irksome and iniquitous, and that the people were being regimented by a bureaucracy, the offshoot of a Socialist Goverment, and that when the National Party became the Government it would abolish the controls and give back to the people their freedom. Last Thursday week a Bill was introduced by the Prime Minister extending the War Regulations and controls from December 31, 1944 to December 31, 1945, said Mr Doyle. In speaking on the bill the Prime Minister said that these regulations were necessary during the war period, and that some of them would be discontinued as the war situation improved. Mr Holland, who strongly supported the Prime Minister’s statement, said that the war regulations and controls were necessary during the war period and the Opposition would support the bill. It was passed through the House with the unanimous support of the National Party. • “This showed the hypocrisy of the National Party. They opposed these war regulations and controls on the public platform and yet, when they had the opportunity of putting into effect, in Parliament, the statements they had made on the public platforms, they failed to do so,” said Mr Doyle. It was time the National Party throughout New Zealand asked their leader where he stood in this matter.

“To me,” Mr Doyle said, “he appeared to be blowing hot and cold with the one breath. If the statements made outside Parliament by the leader of the National Party were correct, why did he show a volte-face by supporting their continuation in Parliament?”