WAIMARINO SEAT

Wanganui Chronicle, 31 October 1946, Page 2

WAIMARINO SEAT

LABOUR CANDIDATE ADDRESS LN TALMARUNUI. Taumarunui, Oct. 28. The Labour candidate for Waimarino, Mr. P. Kearins, addressed a large audience at Taumarunui to-night, when he was given an excellent hearing and at the close of the meeting was accorded a vote of thanks with an expression of confidence in the present administration. The motion was carried without dissent. The candidate paid a tribute to Mr. F. Langstone, saying that the New Parliament, could iH-afford to lose a man of his calibre. Mr. Kearins saiu the National Party stood’ tor the old order, whereas the Labour Party claimed to be progressive and even to take risks to bring about success. They might make mistakes, but that did' not matter if they were prepared to correct them. He promised that as long as the Labour Government remained in power there would be no shortage of employment. In the past the cry of the National Party was, where would the money come from to carry out the proposals they thought could never be put into practice? “You never hear that cry today from the National Party,” said Mr. Kearins. Mr. Kearins was not in favour of socialising small industries. It was the large vested interests and concerns they should go for. The meat trust, the freezing works and the stock and station agents should be taken over to be administered, not as State concerns, but as co-operative concerns in the hands of the farmers themselves in the same wav as the dairy companies were run. The State should take control of the money system, even if the trading banks had to become merely savings banks. The national credit, he asserted, should belong to the State. The Bank of New Zealand should be used for wool brokerage and for making loans to farmers on livestock at lower rates of interest than stock and station agencies were charging.

The speaker also dealt with taxation and the reduction of overseas loans and interest, and in reply to a question, said he favoured a threeyear Parliament. In reply to another question, Mr. Kearins said that the Labour Party’s nationalism schemes would extend only to major interests and would not interfere with smaller private enterprises.