NO HIDDEN PLATFORM

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 509, 12 November 1928, Page 13

NO HIDDEN PLATFORM

MR. A. HARRIS CHARGED MR. OSBORNE AT DEVONPORT A small audience at Narrow Neck Hall on Saturday evening heard Mr. A. G. Osborne, Labour candidate, charge Mr. A. Harris, Independent Reform candidate, with saying that Labour had a hidden platform and that when the elections were over it would recommence issuing red propaganda. ! Mr. Osborne demanded that Mr. ! Harris withdraw the statement. The claim of Mr. Harris that lie was inde--1 pendent was also ridiculed; advertise- ! ments now appearing; were produced to show that Mr. Harris was included I by the Prime Minister as one of the | “Government team/' "A conglomeration of political mis- ! fits,” was Mr. Osborne's description of j the Uniteds. “How,” he asked, “could i the P.P.A., which had stabbed Sir I Joseph in the back in a political sense, i and tried to force him out of political j life, now honestly be found in the samo camp with him? j “‘While the United candidate for Waitemata was attacking boy con- | scription. Sir Joseph, who introduced I it, was defending it, and if the im- | possible happened and Mr. Greville | found himself in the House he would j meekly swallow Sir Joseph’s conscrip- | tion policy. Again, while Sir Joseph j was scheming to spend £10,000,000 bolstering up the railways, his candidate for Ponsonby was prepared to sell the railways. “Mr. Veitch was against extending the State Advances Office work, while Sir Joseph wanted to borrow £70,000,000 to do it. Sir Joseph, three years ago, offered to work with Mr. Coates to form a fusion against Labour, and it was the Liberals that kept Mr. Massey in office for the lust three years of his life; and in the last Parliament the Liberals, except Mr. Atmore, consistently voted with the Reform Party. “The real fact .was that some of the politicians thought that the Coates party was unpopular and reckoned that they could get back on the blind side of the public. “The Reform Party, if it got back, would make an onslaught on wages; already the Otamatea County, the chairman of which was the Premier's brother, had reduced the wages of its surfacemen to 12s a day, and it was more than a coincidence that the Prime Minister and the chairman of the county that has started wagecutting were brothers. It was collusion between them to get a movement going to force down wages. A ine-tenths of Uniteds would vote against Labour. "Mr. Harris was setting up to be a r T' rd . of flna -nce by asserting that •Labour s schemes would cost the country £9,000.000; it would not cost anything. Those who now escaped tlieu- fair share of taxation would pay. Reforms charge of disloyalty was countered by the fact that a greater percentage of the Labour men had war service than either of the other two parties.” ■