MR FORBES' TOUR

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 279, 25 November 1931, Page 7

MR FORBES' TOUR

MEETING AT ASHBURTON LABOUR POLICY ATTACKED [ Per Press Association. ] ASHBURTON, Nov. 24. The Premier, Hon. G. W. Forbes, addressed a crowded meeting here this afternoon. He was warmly welcomed on rising and was frequently applauded during his speech. After explaining tho serious national difficulties leading to the formation of tho Coalition, Mr Forbes said that Labour had failed to grasp the financial situation. To restore tho salary cuts would cost £3,000,000, and with the other things, Labour promised to do if returned to power it would require £12,000,000 to £15,000,000. He had been criticised for supporting the abolition of the graduated land tax, but tho present situation was extraordinary. The men the hardest bit were the sheepfarmers. Mr Forbes reaffirmed that the men with a lot of land were the hardest hit. “Ballance and Soddon were broad-minded men and in similar circumstances would have done as I did,” ho said. ‘‘l was told that I had been false to my trust. That is my reply when people tell me what. Ballance and Soddon would have done.”

The question of unemployment was one of tho most serious, and he had not heen ab’e to find in any country anything to guide Now Zealand. Tho Minister of Labour and tho Minister of Agriculture were occupied in providing schemes to divert tho labour available on to tho land, to make the work productive. and securo a return for the money spent. Mr Forbes said tho Coalition was out to thorough]?- overhaul tho Arbitration system, but he gave a flat denial to tho statement that ho G’overnmen intended to abolish tho Court. There wore ways in which tho system wtis aiding the relief of tho unemployment. Tho Government was out to make it more elastic and more applicable to present-day conditions.

On other matters, Mr Forbes spoke on the lines of his speeches at Ranginrn and elsewhere. Concluding, ho urged the support of tho official Coalition candidate fnr the Partv. Politics did not count in this election. The Coalition Government’s policy would be one of rehabilitation. A vote of thanks and confidence in tho Coalition Government was proposed, hut was altered to confidence in the Coalition Government as at present constituted and was carried in that form unanimously.