BASIS OF PROSPERITY

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7137, 25 November 1949, Page 7

BASIS OF PROSPERITY

STATED BY NATIONALIST LABOUR PARTY CRITICISED This election was a momentous one because many young people were going to £he poll for the first time. The National Party’s job was to convince them real prosperity did exist in New Zealand for 95 years before Labour came into power, said the National candidate for Waimarino, Mr A. H. MacPherson, in his first southern meeting at Taihape. It would be difficult to point to a single economic industry that had not become firmly established in the face of world competition before Labour came into office. “If we go back to 1882 and remember the first shipment of frozen meat it is then our economy started on a sound basis. Not a Labour Government nor a non-Labour Government put New Zealand on the map, but refrigeration. When wc knew we could land primary products in Britain and * world markets we knew the economy was right for all time.” Government members were stating all over the country that a depression was well on the way and that if the National Party became the Government New Zealand would revert to slump conditions. He challenged any member'of the Labour Party to say they had a plan for the last depression.

Present “Prosperity” “The Labour Government tell you that for the past 14 years they brought an era of prosperity. Are we prosperous when 59,000 people require homes to-day and people are living in State houses who are able and willing to build for themselves and to the detriment of the" worker who in most cases cannot get State homes ?

“If the National Party becomes the Government it will lift restrictions to allow private enterprise as well as the State to build homes. People today were living in conditions as bad and in some cases worse than conditions of the slump. “What is the good of telling us we are prosperous when we find that £1 to-day purchases what 11s 8d bought in 1939, and that it takes £1 14s 4d to-day to buy what £1 bought in 1939 ? The National Party would not touch the family or age benefits. They were proud of social security. What the National Party would do was to look into the administration. What was the good of giving an age benefit of £2 10s a week when its spending power was worth 295? What was the good of saying people had free hospitals if, when ordered, they could not be admitted because half the hospital was locked up and beds were idle because of staff shortage and other causes? Money Needed For Roads

How could they say they were prosperous when roads and bridges were so neglected that they would cost more than £57,000,000 to put into repair? Was it prosperity when an American car at £3OO f.o.b. cost a buyer over £lOOO in New Zealand?

Sales tax was computed on the sum total of duty and freight. Should that rate go higher, up went the sales tax, yet when the sales tax was placed on at five per cent, as an emergency measure our Labour friends said it was a cruel and unjust act and when Labour became the Government they would wipe it from the statutes. They had increased it to 20 per cent, and were reaping millions of pounds. If the National Party became the Government sales tax would be removed on all labour-sav-ing devices in the home. Dealing with housing he said the farmer and rural worker will have the same priveleges and standard as people in the cities. The only way to get more production was to give the country area amenities and incentjives. National would relax ministerial control and hand over to the farmers the right to run their own industry with the Government at all times guaranteeing the prices of production.