INDEPENDENT RADICAL

Taranaki Daily News, 8 November 1935, Page 7

INDEPENDENT RADICAL

MR. SHEAT’S CAMPAIGN

OPENING ADDRESS AT WAITARA.

WOULD VOTE AGAINST COALITION.

GUARANTEED PRICES ATTACKED.

Outlining his platform in the first speech of his campaign at Waitara last night, Mr. W. A. Sheat, Independent Radical candidate for the New Plymouth electorate, stated in reply to a questioner that he would definitely not vote to keep the present Government in office if returned to Parliament. On the other hand, such was his opinion of the Labour Party that he hoped the balance of power would be held by men who were not shackled to the party machine. Speaking of guaranteed prices, Mr. Sheat said no Labour man had ever given him a satisfactory explanation of how the plan was to operate. The farmers had as much chance of getting the guaranteed prices as they had of getting Sir Joseph Ward’s fabulous £70,000,000. It was utterly impossible to guarantee prices for a product sold on the other side of the world. It was an insult to the intelligence of the electors of New Zealand to draw a parallel between this and the Wellington milk scheme. An interjector: There are other countries with a guaranteed price scheme. Guaranteed price schemes, replied Mr. Sheat, were based on internal, not external consumption and buying. Mr. Lang had guaranteed a price to the wheatgrowers of New South Wales and had ignominously failed to carry it out. Mr. Nash had noticeably left this out of his speech. At the time he was a Labour Party candidate, continued Mr. Sheat, Labour had no magic scheme to guarantee prices irrespective of what the produce was bringing in the world’s market. He did not believe that even many in* the Labour Party believed in it. The, Democrats seemed to believe that they could borrow their way back to prosperity whereas the country had in reality quite enough debt as it was. Past Governments had shirked taxation when the country could stand it and had landed into the depression with an increasing rather than a decreasing burden of taxation. STEP IN RIGHT DIRECTION. As far as the exchange policy was concerned, Mr. Sheat said he was prepared to admit that the Government had taken a step in the right direction—to prevent deflation, even if it had imposed a hardship on a section of the consuming community. The Government, however, had not gone far enough to assure that the additional money released by the exchange was kept in circulation rather than being paid into the banks to liquidate debts. If a moratorium had been arranged at the same time as the exchange it would have proved a great advantage. However, he had to give the Government credit for the shrewd move of wrapping up the exchange business so closely with the Central Reserve Bank that if exchange went back to parity the bank would be insolvent and the institution on which the national currency depended would be wrecked. A return to parity to-day would inevitably mean bankruptcy for the Reserve Bank and no party coulcj face the consequences of reducing the exchange however bitterly they had opposed it in the first place. The country had now largely adjusted itself to the change and he predicted there would be no early reversal of the policy. He did not, he averred, believe in the principle of private enterprise being mixed up with public ownership as was the case with the Reserve Bank. It had been' absolutely unnecessary to raise capital privately for the establishment of the Reserve Bank, He believed that institution should be controlled entirely by the State.' He believed also in State control of the Mortgage Corporation and in an extension of the scope of the present mortgage legislation. .If Mr. Coates had had his way this would have been done. If at the end of the five-year period provision was made to take account of the equity the farmer originally had and he was then allowed reasonable equity there would be a sufficient inducement for him to go on working his land. But this had not been done. Mr. Savage had missed the opportunity of a lifetime in not pointing this out and shoeing he was genuinely interested in the plight of the distressed farmer. But he had not done this. He had preferred to stick out in blind opposition to the Government and bring forth some vague scheme of guaranteed prices.

Mr. Sheat believed that when sacrifices were to be made that they should be borne equally by borrower and lender. The -Democrat Party had said much about the sanctity of contract, but while the bankruptcy courts were jn existence there could be no actual sanctity of contract, Many of the farmers’ contracts had, inevitably, to be thrown overboard. It was unavoidable. BETTER STANDARD OF LIVING. He would support, said Mr. Sheat, any sound scheme to increase the standard of living. He stood for development of New Zealand’s resources to the full ana against uneconomic depletion of resources. He believed also in the redistribution of taxation, by reduction of tax on the necessaries of life, by the abolition of the sales tax, and by a properly graduated income tax —by the cutting out of many small, unnecessary, irritating forms of taxation. Another point of his policy, said Mr. Sheat, was local body reform by amalgamation. He believed that there were far too many local bodies for economic administration. The next point of his policy was overhaul of financial methods and the rating system. He believed that the interference of bureaucratic officials with local bodies should be eliminated and that the creation of bureaucratic administration bbards should be eliminated also, “It is high time,” he said, "that members of Parliament did the business they are sent to Parliament anl paid to do.” Another point of the candidate’s policy was the reform of antiquated Parliamentary procedure so that the real business of .Parliament could be done quickly and efficiently—according to the rules of the 20th. century rather than the Middle Ages. It was also drastically necessary to hand over control of civil servants wages to a judicial tribunal, SO that vote-buying in election year should be eliminated and the civil servants themselves should no longer be made the chopping block of politicians. It would require no additional machinery to effect this.

He believed ip dealing with “pricefixing rings” so that essential produce could be kept down to a sufficiently low level that it was within the power of everyone to buy, while yet the price returned a fair profit to the producer. He advocated a broad educational policy as a means by which future problems in New Zealand would be solved. He advocated the evolution of national superannuation and health insurance schemes. He believed that electrical reform was necessary.