The Timaru Herald MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1931. LABOUR’S CHANGED TACTICS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 18844, 6 April 1931, Page 8

The Timaru Herald MONDAY, APRIL 6, 1931. LABOUR’S CHANGED TACTICS.

“Those who come into this House with the air of injured innocence,” declared the Member for Clutha in a lively counter-tlirust aimed at the Labour Party, “know that wherever Labour Parties in any part of the world have had to administer ' affairs, there is a far worse state of things than we have in Hew Zealand to-day, bad and all as it is.” Declaring that the Reform Party was the only Party that will be called upon to clean up the mess that New Zealand had got into—largely as a result of the Labour Party trying to dominate the political situation,” Mr Waite insisted that when the Reform Party went out of office, wages in New Zealand were higher than they have ever been, and when the Reform Party comes back to resume the administration of the affairs of the country, prosperity will return. Such a thrust angered the Labour Party, which has for some weeks done little but weep crocodile tears for the fate of the workers under the Government’s economy proposals. But Mr Holland and his talkative colleagues cannot free themselves from a share in the responsibility for the dangerous drift that the United-Labour alliance permitted to continue to the danger of the financial stability of the country. The records show that Mr Holland and the members of the Parliamentary Labour Party, assisted the Government to ignore the obvious signs of the times. It is all very touching for Labour to protest so tearfully, but the country is not likely to be mislead by such barefaced hypocrisy. Doubtless the near approach of the general election has aroused the Labour Party to the obvious danger of keeping company with the Government. The explanation is not far to seek. It is known, of course, that the rank and file of the Labour Party never welcomed JTr Holland's slavish support of Mr Forbes and his spendthrift Administration. For long years, Labour was content to plough a lonely furrow, willing to bide the time, when the Party would make advances first into the position of official Opposition and then to the Treasury benches. The Party’s association with the United Party, the shrewdest observers within the Party soon realised, could bring nothing but disfavour upon Mr Holland and his colleagues, since any credit that was due to the deeds of the ruling Administration, would be monopolised by the United Party, Mr Holland and his Party sharing only in the discredit that would come from the maladministration of the affairs of the country during the life of the alliance. But for two sessions Mr Holland attempted to justify the tactics of the Labour Party, by claiming that he had a mandate from the people to use the votes and the influence of his Party to keep the Reform Party out of office. Not only were Labour principles ruthlessly sacrificed, but the United Party was assisted in its heavy borrowing and reckless spending policy. If then Mr Holland had a mandate from the people to prevent the return of a Reform Administration, how will the Labour Party explain its dramatic change of policy. Not only have Labour critics turned their attention from the Reform Party, and have concentrated their fierce and relentless attacks on the Treasury benches where still sit their allies of two sessions, but information gained behind the scenes in Wellington indicates that the Labour Party will seize upon the first chance afforded by any hostile move on the part of the Reform Party, to throw their support in the direction of unseating the present Government, even at the risk of precipitating the return of the Reform Party to office. What then becomes of Mr Hollands mandate? It is futile for the Labour Party to attack the Government and fiercely criticise the disastrous results of its unbusinesslike policy, since, as Mr Waite showed, in a timely fashion, that Labour administrations the world over had done little but muddle. Even a cut in Civil Service wages and salaries is not unknown where Labour rules, while the mere mention of unemployment gives the Socialist Government in Britain a rather rude reminder of the pre-election promises the Party made in their quest for votes in exchange for an undertaking to bring a new heaven and a new earth to Britain where idle people would be unknown! Moreover, the position in Australia has applied the acid test to Labour’s quack remedies. Mr Waite s challenge to Labour to show that Labour can rise superior to the economic machine even if it has control of the Treasury benches, meet with merely an outburst of empty protests, but the fact remains, notwithstanding all that Labour speakers said to the contrary in one of the longest drawn out discussions on the pay of workers, that “wherever Labour Parties in any other part of the world have had to administer the affairs of their country, there is a far worse state of things than we have in New Zealand, bad and all as it is ” Finding themselves devoid of an effective rejoinder to this challenge, the members of the ParUsunentagy Labour Party -

attempted to laugh off that statement, but that laugh was about as . thin and unconvincing as their arguments in defence of their political and tactical inconsistency.