LIVELY ONSET

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1939, Page 5

LIVELY ONSET

MR F. W. DOIDGE’S MAIDEN SPEECH GOVERNMENT DENOUNCED. PEOPLE GULLED INTO FALSE SECURITY. (By Telegraph— Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. "We had a general election in October and I would suggest that it was won by the Government on a policy of false pretences,” said Mr F. W. Doidge (Opposition, Tauranga), in his maiden speech made during the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives last night. Mr Doidge spoke for about an hour, and his sallies drew applause at some stages from both sides of the House.

"We were told that the prosperity oi the country was due to the Government’s administration and we were given a promise that that prosperity would continue,” Mr Doidge said. “The people were led to believe that they had only to return the Government to office and manna would continue to fall. The people were gulled into a sense of false security: What happened? Within a month the Prime Minister told the people that he had to declare a state of emergency. Was there anything in that month that justified that change? I ask why the Prime Minister could not have told the people before election day wha he told them a month afterward. He knows that if he had done so he would never have been returned to the Treasury benches. We have since had the admission of the Minister of Finance that for the last three years we were living £13,000,000 above our income.” “I suggest to the Prime Minister that even now the position could be righteo if the Government would admit that it is time to call a halt, that it carino l spend its way to prosperity, that persecution of capital should cease, and that development of the primary industries of the country must be its first consideration,” Mr Doidge observed in concluding. “It is foolish to believe that we are not relying mainly and will not rely for a long time to come on the products of .the soil.” LABOUR REPLY POINTS IN MR DOIDGE’S RECORD. Mr A. G. Osborne (Government. Onehunga) who followed. in the debate devoted his speech largely to recounting the previous political activities and utterances of Mr Doidge. In 1935. whdn an Independent candidate for the'Rotorua seaQ he had referred to party hacks, and was thus now in a position which he had deplored then. Mr Osborne said. Mr Doidge, in 1935, had said that Mr Coates had pretty well boxed the political compass, but he had done the same himself. On September 2a, 1935 he had said: "In New Zealand we were under Soviet rule, and Mr Coates was head of the Soviet. Somewhere tn the background was a Prime Minister who played the part ol a rubber stamp.”- And again: “Mr Coates is f fine figure of a man, but docs anyone suggest that he is of Prime Ministerial timber?” Another reported utterance by Mi Doidge in the 1935 campaign, quoted by Mr Osborne, was that neither Mi Forbes nor Mr Coates measured up t( the calibre of Seddon. Massey and Ward. The Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes (Opposition. Hurunui): Hear, hear. In the course of his speech. Mi Doidge had said that he deeply regretted and retracted a remark he hatmade about Mr Forbes when he- (Mi Doidge) was contesting the Rotorua seat in 1935. ________