THE Wairarapa Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1936. A POLITICAL NECESSITY.

Wairarapa Age, 1 July 1936, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age WEDNESDAY, JULY 1, 1936. A POLITICAL NECESSITY.

It is not necessary to go as far as the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes in his rather gloomy anticipations of disaster from the policy of the present Labour Government to perceive the advisability of building up in this country a throughly strong and capable political Opposition. With such a majority and backing as it possesses for the time being, the Government evidently is not to be denied a full working opportunity and test. There are legitimate grounds for holding, however, that its outlook is unduly narrow and that its policy does not take account of the interests of all sections of the population. Indeed, it may be questioned whether, at a long view, the policy of the Government takes account of the total interests of any section of the population. It is undoubtedly right and altogether desirable that wages and living standards should be lifted to the highest possible level, but an attempt unduly to rush the process is liable to work out badly even for thosp whom it is intended immediately to benefit. In any case, the need for a strong and capable Opposition would exist even if power were held by a Labour Government of the broadest views and most genuinely national outlook. Under our political constitution, the Opposition has a part to play hardly if at all less important than that of the Government in office. Time and events will alter the existing state of affairs, in which Labour is more than a little inclined to claim a monopoly of political virtue. The lines on which the National Party is organising appear to be well-considered and to offer every reasonable promise of a good outcome. A scheme of decentralisation has been mapped out which should ensure an unhampered introduction of new blood and new ideas. The broad aim, no doubt, must be to bring together as many as possible of those who perceive errors and shortcomings in current Labour policy and are alive to better and more hopeful ways of advancing the ‘interests and promoting the welfare of the Dominion and its people. There must be no question of attempting to subordinate national to sectional interests. A non-Labour Opposition at this time of day must be prepared to move with the times. Indeed it must rest its best claim to consideration upon its ability to indicate a better and more practical approach than that of the Labour Party to the objectives of community welfare which the Labour Party ostensibly, and in a measure quite sincerely, is intent on attaining. An open-minded readiness to deal with national problems on their merits, and an equal readiness to sink petty and sectional differences, are the most essential conditions of the organisation of such an Opposition, and Government of to-morrow, as the Dominion plainly needs. FREEDOM TO APPLAUD. The serious issues involved cannot rob of an element of the comic an item of news from Moscow on the subject of the promised new provision for freedom of speech and the freedom of the press. The official organ of the Communist Party, it is stated, stigmatises those who hop«e to undermine the Socialist order as enemies of the people, “and says that the provision applies only to those who loyally support the Soviet regime.” The rugged simplicity of this pronouncement is on a per with the solution in Nazi Germany of the problem of electoral freedom. That problem, it Will be remembered, has been solved by giving the people of Qermany entire freedom to vote provided they vote in the right way, by upholding the Nazi regime. In Germany the measure of national unity thus established was marred only by the fact that a proportion of the electors, denied the opportunity of voting against the Nazi regime, took the nearest possible step in that direction by

spoiling their*voting papers. In view of its happy solution of the problem of “freedom of speech,” Soviet Russia may be able io invent some even better method of jone-way voting than has yet been devised in Germany. It cannot but im proas observers in countries still democratic; however, that though Soviet and Nazi dictators are savagely opposed to ode 1 another and proclaim entirely different aims, their working methods closely approach identity.