PUBLIC CONSCIENCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 80, Issue 240, 11 October 1938, Page 8

PUBLIC CONSCIENCE

NEED FOR RE-AWAKENING

MR. H. C. VEITCH SPEAKS AT WANGANUI EAST

Speaking at Wanganui East last night, Mr. H. C. Veitch, National candidate for Wanganui, referred to the question of the abuse of the commercial broadcasting service. He contended that to make use of Government property in order to disseminate party propaganda was to abuse the constitutional rights of the people. Whilst he believed that all should be free to express their opinions, he did not believe that it was right that one man only should be given use of the Government station.

Mr. Veitch said that there appeared to be a need for a re-awakening of the public conscience, as too many of the people were not prepared to resist the numerous infringements of the public liberties perpetrated by the party at present in power. Labour’s Policy of Inflation. Mr. Veitch also contended that the Government had, by its policy of inflation, high taxation, public works, and unnecessary restrictions upon private enterprise, discouraged the development of industry. The National Party believed that the Government should not itself embark upon industry, but he stated that by following a policy of allowing private enterprise to do its job new industries would spring up in this country as they had done during past periods of prosperity. Millions of pounds worth of New Zealand capital had gone overseas so as to establish industry in Australia and Britain. The return of confidence in New Zealand would involve the return of capital to be invested in New Zealand in new industry. Reserve Bank Assets Falling. Mr. Veitch pointed out that the inflationary policy of the present Government had brought the balancesheet of the Reserve Bank to a dangerous condition. The real assets were diminishing rapidly. The London funds had diminished by over eight millions over the year. We were rapidly aproaching the stage where we would not be able to finance our imports. The only hope of insulating New Zealand was to build up reserves in London so that imports could be bought in times of depression. The Labour Party, whilst preaching insulation, was, by its policy, eliminating all possibility of insulating the country. At the conclusion of his address, Mr. Veitch answered a number of questions. There was an attendance of 250 electors, presided over by Mr. H. G. Horsley.

POST OFFICE DEPOSITS

'The Game is Up,” Says Mr. Mazengarb CHALLENGE TO MR. SAVAGE A challenge to the Prime Minister to publish the returns showing the amount of money deposited and the amount withdrawn from the Post Office Savings Bank for the six months ended on September 30 last was made by Mr. O. C. Mazengarb, National Party candidate for Wellington Suburbs, in an address to a meeting which crowded the Methodist Hali at Kaiwarra on Saturday night. Mr. Mazengarb said he had recently referred back > to the report of the speech which Mr. Savage had made at the Easter conference of the Labour Party inaugurating the 1938 campaign. That was the speech in which Mr. Savage had said that the present prosperity would last only as long as the present Government was in power to maintain it. Mr. Savage had quoted the savings bank returns as “an index to business activity' 1 and as showing that “thrift to-day was at peak level.” If that was a good argument in April it should be a good argument to-day. But even while Mr. Savage was speaking the position was changing against him. The abstract of statistics showed that in the first lour months of this financial year the deposits had dropped by a third of a million and that nearly a million more money had been withdrawn from the Post Office Savings Bank.

“With a push to the bell the Prime Minister can get the returns for the two following months,” said Mr. Mazengarb. "If they were satisfactory to him he would be able to sound the loud trumpet about them, just as he did in his broadcast speech last April. But although I nave made the challenge to the Prime Minister, 1 don't expect that he will publish the figures before the election because he knows full well that the game is up. Tlie public will get a shock soon to find that for the first time since the depth of the depression the people who have accounts in the Post Office have withdrawn more money than they have paid in. It is because they are rinding it necessary to withdraw money and because the Government is making such heavy demands upon the.resources of the Reserve Bank that the finances have gone beyond the point at which Mr. Nash can control them. “How idle it is for the Government to talk of controlling the credit and currency of the country in future when they have already lost control This is precisely the ‘first-rate financial crisis' which leading Socialists seek to create in order to usher in the Socialist State. People did think that Mr. Nash was strong enough to keep the left wing of the Labour Party m order, but Mr. J. A. Lee and the other hotheads and all the Communists outside the Parliamentary group are jubilant over the way in which the Minister of Finance is being driven into the issue of paper money and the inflation of the currency.”

Six policemen had been detailed for duty at the meeting, but the expectations of a rowdy evening were not fulfilled, as the interjections were largely humorous. After he had answered several questions, Mr. Mazengarb was accorded a vote of thanks on the motion of Miss Jessie Cameron. Mr. R. E. Flaws was chairman.