‘TOOL OF GOVERNMENT”

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1043, 6 August 1930, Page 7

‘TOOL OF GOVERNMENT”

REFORM MEMBER ATTACKS LABOUR PARTY AIDING POLICY OF DRIFT THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter PARLIAMENT BLDGS., Tuesday. “The Labour Party is the tool of the Government. There is great division in its ranks, but the leader cracked his whip and the members came to heel. Its success in restraining a candidate from standing for Invercargill is another link in the chain of evidence.” That was the opinion of the Labour Party advanced by Mr. D. Jones (Re-form—Mid-Canterbury), in the course of the Budget debate speech in the House this evening. Mr. G. C. Munns (United —Roskill): It didn’t restrain him in Parnell. Mr. Jones continued that the Minister of Lands, the Hon. E. A. Ransom, had accused the Reform Party of a policy of drift. It was the Government that was drifting, and as a New Zealander he deplored it. It had drifted similarly in 1908, and the result was wholesale dismissals and reductions. Labour had driven Australia into the same position, and if the present policy of the Government were pursued under present prices, nothing could stop a general reduction in wages throughout the Domin ion, and Labour, equally with the Government, must bear the blame. The Leader of the Labour Party, Mr. H. E. Holland: Do you think we’d save them by cutting wages down? If Reform had been in office, Mr Jones continued, the state of affairs would not have occurred. This statement caused loud Labour and Gov ernment laughter. The Labour Party, said Mr. Jones, knew the position, and had sacrificed the worker on the altar of political tactics.