THE POLITICAL PARTIES.

Taranaki Daily News, 19 January 1923, Page 6

THE POLITICAL PARTIES.

LIBERAL-LABOUR LEADER ■RETICENT. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, Jan. 15. Mr. T. M. Wilford, the leader of the Liberal-Labour Party, is back in town again after his holiday in the North, but when seen to-day he showed no disposition to discuss the political situation. This attitude, of course, is justified by the circumstances. One of the local newspapers stated after the publication of the resolutions adopted by the Reform caucus last week that they opened the way to negotiations between the two older parties. But this was not the case at all. except so far as the resolutions indicated the readiness of Mr. Massey’s followers to concur in any arrangement their leader might make to give stability io the Government. The next move still rests with the Primo Minister, as if did when he approached Sir Joseph Ward preparatory to the formation of the War Cabinet in 1914. Whether or not any further progress will be made in the matter before the impending short session of Parliament, remains to be seen, but at the moment there seems to be little prospect of any earlier action. The strained personal relations between the Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal-Labour Opposition will not facilitate the negotiations.

THE LABOUR PARTY’. Meanwhile the Labour Party, whicl constitutes just upon one-half of tin Opposition, is able to regard the poli tical tangle with interested coirjpla cency. Mr. Holland and his associate, refuse positively to admit that theii substantial success at the polls la.si month was in any way due to Reforn and Liberal electors casting their vote. 5 for Labour candidates when there wa s no candidate of their own particulai colour in the field. They claim that the doubling of their party strength in the House was due to a growing revolt against the old order, and predict that each succeeding appeal to the constituencies will reveal a. similar tendency. But the actual figures do not bear out this assumption. The Labour Party did not obtain its increased representation through an increased number of votes being cast in its favour, but by the lesrt inequitable operation of the electoral system which deprived it of nearly one-half the representation it should have obtained in 1919. The sane solid men in the party admit that Labour has made no real progress in the country during the last three years, and declare that it will make none in the next three yers unless it modifier its demands and very materially revises its methods. ELECTION PETITIONS.

AVith the voting strengths or the Government and of the Opposition so evenly balanced as they appear to be at the present time, it ns only natural that Mr. Massey should wish to have the meeting of Parliament postponed fill after the various election petitions have been decided. This will be the convenient course, if not the strictly constitutional one. and no objection to its adoption is likely to be raised on either side of the House. The petitions themselves are not open to discussion, except, in the most general terms: but the long list of irregularities alleged against Sir Maui Pomare and his friends in connection with the Western Maori election suggests again that it is quite time the Maori elections were conducted hv ballot in the same manner as arc the European elections. This reform is now long overdue, and probably it has been delayed as much by the growing feeling that special representation of the Maori people is no longer necessary as it has ’been by a careless disregard of the educational progress of the Native race.

Bankers and other business men here, while welcoming the decreases in departmental expenditure during the twelve months ended on December 3i, announced, by the Prime "Minister on Saturday, are not yet satisfied that everything possible has been done In this direction. They point out that largo parts of the savings in the Railway Department and the Post and Telegraph Department are due to the discontinuance of desirable services and that the saving of the butter subsidy and the termination of certain pensions are not properly included in the list. At the same time they have words of praise for the courage with which Mr. Massey attacked the problem on the eve of/a general election and for the beginning he has made with a very necessary work. Their earnest desire now is for a stable Government that will dare to overhaul the incidence of taxation in such a fashion as to encourage the ■speedy revival of trade and commerce. “There is no doubt,” the Dominion says this morning speaking on their behalf, and referring particularly to the company tax and similar imposts, “that as they now fall these taxes are doing a good deal not only to hinder the recovery of established industries, hut to discourage the investment of now capital in the Dominion.” That is the burden of the complaint coming from all sections of the business community.