VIGOROUS CRITICISM

Taranaki Daily News, 12 September 1935, Page 5

VIGOROUS CRITICISM

MINISTER OF EDUCATION SPEAKS. ' ATTACK ON LABOUR PARTY. (By Telegraph—Special reporter.) Wellington, Last Night. A vigorous attack on the Labour Party was made by the Minister of Employment and Education, the Hon. S. G. Smith, in his speech on the Address-in-Reply in the House of Representatives to-night Mr. Smith said that Labour’s professions of admiration for the old Liberal Party were belied by the party’s own history. Mr. Smith said he had been more closely associated with political life in New Zealand and for a very much longer period than the Leader of the Opposition. He was intensely amused at the attempt to disparage the Government and to give the implication that the Lacour Party, if it got into power, would revert to the policy of the Dominion’s old Liberal leaders. _ One of Mr. Savage’s counts in his indictment of the Government was that it had fractured the foundations of the old Liberal tower of prosperity. “May I remind him in his raking over of the past for brickbats to throw at the Government that he overlooked the stones that Labour used to throw at the Liberal Ministers,” Mr. Smith said. “If the Leader of the Opposition had taken the trouble to get all his facts of political history straight he would see that the very origin of his own party was the result of bitter discontent with the Liberal legislation which was the admiration of the world, but apparently not of Labour. 1909 CONFERENCE RESOLUTION. “What was the verdict of the Trades and Labour Council’s annual conference at Wellington in 1909? It was a decision in favour of the Conservatives, the socalled ’Tories of those days. “Mr. T. O’Byrne moved that the time had arrived when the council should take definite action in endeavouring to return Labour members to Parliament. He said the Labour Party had been dragged at the heels of the Liberal Party long enough. Another speaker said the Labour Party would have got more concessions from the Conservatives. The motion was 'carried by 22 votes to two. Obviously, only two out of the 24 delegates present admired the legislation of the Liberals. Ti-.c Leader of the Opposition may be a lowed to gnaw the dry bone of Liberalism. “His other points * are as flimsy and just as easily turned. He overlooked that we have been rolling a snowball uphill and towards the peak of prosperity. The Labour Party here, as elsewhere, prefers the easier course of racing downhill. . Mr. F. Langstone (Lab., Waimanno): Who wrote that for you? Mr. Smith: I can assure the hon. gentleman he did not. If he _ had written it I could not have read it. Continuing, Mr. Smith said the public debt to-day was less than it was four years ago. The 'great country where Mr. Savage came from, Australia, was not in as good a position as New Zealand, which had reduced its public debt', lived within its income and had no floating debt. Australia had borrowed £122,000,000 between 1930 and 1934, and had a floating debt of more than £82,000,000. , “NOT GOING TO BE FOOLED." “People in this country are not going to be fooled by the Labour' Party, Mr. Smith said. “They are going back to the very system which the founders of their party destroyed. It is impossible for them to go back. The Trades Hall would not allow them to do that.” Mr. Smith said that for four years members of the' Labour Party had had the platforms of the country to themselves. They created the. impression that the Government had failed, but its record was one not of failure but of success. Wherever Labour had been in power there had been failure. A Labour member: What about Queensland? Mr. Smith said that every enterprise established by the previous Labour Government in Queensland had been a failure and had to be abandoned. The present Labour Premier of Queensland, Mr. Forgan Smith, was not preaching guaranteed prices, for he was in power. Mr. F. Jones (Lab., Dunedin South): What about payments to the sugar industry? “Wherever Labour has been m power it has failed,” the Minister continued. “If Labour had been in power in this country in the crisis we would not have had a balanced Budget, but the receiver would have been here instead.”