SOLVING THE NATION'S PROBLEMS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19835, 26 June 1934, Page 6

SOLVING THE NATION'S PROBLEMS.

To the Editor of “ The Timaru Herald " Sir—Those of your readers who are alive to the gravity of the present situation, will feel gratful to Mr T. D. Burnett, M.P., for his obviously sincere suggestions on the subject. Mr Burnett is convinced that a bad and incompetent Government cannot possibly give us the aid we need in the present crisis; and so, in defiance of all history and the experience of the modern world, he would revert to a system of provincial governments, on the mere gamble that they might prove more competent than the present Central Government, of which he is a staunch supporter. Surely Mr Burnett knows it is not merely a change in the personnel of Government that we need, but a radically different Government policy; a policy freed from all the entanglements of vested interests; one based on modern economic knowledge, and one which will do what the coun - try requires to be done in order to give every man, woman and child in it a fair and a square deal. Central governments have been successful in other parts of the world, and there is not the slightest doubt that we could have a similarly successful Government in this country, if only the people were honestly dealt by. The function of a government is to see that the people are well fed, comfortably and becomingly clothed, sanitarily housed, properly educated, trained in industry, made healthy and happy citizens, with a bright and encouraging outlook for the future, and, above all, protected from the rapacious depredations of those brute-men and savage-men, who have not yet been eliminated in the process of evolution, as unfit to live in civilised communities. Call this spoonfeeding if you like, but, it is the only alternative to a continuance of the present jungle scramble, which has driven us into our present unhappy plight. Mr Burnett exclaims: "In God’s name, can no one preach the gospel ot common interest?” Well, to the present writer’s personal knowledge, that gospel has been continuously preached in this country for the past thirty years, with the result that the New Zealand Labour Party has come into being, with a plan for doing nationally, and in a much better way otherwise, most of the things Mr Burnett would do locally, at a cost of 9/- per day per worker, which, in this most favoured of all lands, is surely an outrageous proposal.—l am, etc., A. M. PATERSON. Timaru, June 24.