The Waipawa Mail FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1939. MAN-MADE TROUBLES

Waipawa Mail, Volume LXVII, Issue 102, 12 May 1939, Page 2

The Waipawa Mail FRIDAY, MAY 12, 1939. MAN-MADE TROUBLES

recently to railwaymen at Otahuhu, the Minister of Railways (Mr Sullivan) said if there was anyone in the country, the Leader of the Opposition, “Tory” Press, or “Tory” politicians, who thought the Government “had its tail down,” and that it was quailing before difficulties, they “hhd another think coming'.” There was no more optimistic group of people in the Dominion than Mr Savage and the Ministers that surround him. In this and the statement that the Government was facing difficulties which its enemies were hoping would result in its destruction, 1 the Minister insinuates that the criticism which the Government is now receiving has a party political origin. There hare been other similar references recently, such as allegations that some people would damage the country in order to destroy the Government. This is mere camouflage. The country’s difficulties are of the Government’s own making. So far from contributing to those difficulties, the Opposition and the Press have done their utmost to avert trouble by warning the Government while there was yet time for correction. In Parliament the Opposition called attention at an early stage to the loss of sterling funds, and for well over a year past the Press has pointed to the growing evidence of the approaching crisis. Now nothing can alter the fact that this is a Government-made crisis—not made deliberately, of course, but by the Government’s persistence in courses which could have no other end. In his dual role as Minister of Industries and Commerce and Minister of Railways, Mr Sullivan has himself given an example of the Government’s confused policy. Over eighteen months ago, as Minister of Industries and Commerce, he was warning a meeting of unionists that too much could not he laid upon industry if it were to expand. Now, as Minister of Railways, he states witß satisfaction that during its term of office the Government has granted to railway employees concessions in ! working conditions, the total cost of which is approaching the £3,000,000 :

mark. Other increases are probably pending, “nor would they then have reached the end of the road.” Who has paid the £3,000,000 and who will have to pay what is yet to cornel The very industry that the Minister of Industries and Commerce is anxious to expand. Payment may be disguised in taxation to pay the interest which the railways cannot earn, or it may be direct in a 10 per cent, increase in fares and freights, hut it must be made. After this, Mr Sullivan repeats his former warning and asks “railwaymen, as well as other workers, inside and outside the Public Service, to go easy with their claims in the immediate future.” This is sound, and the earlier advice against overburdening industry was wise; but it would have been wiser still if the Minister and the Government had taken the advice, and brought practice into line with precept.