LIVING STANDARDS

Waikato Times, Volume 106, Issue 22612, 18 May 1945, Page 2

LIVING STANDARDS

AIMS OF NATIONAL PARTY The members of the National Party were looking to the future and they wished to improve the standards of the common man who, like themselves, was making his own way in life, said Mr W. J. Poison, actingLeader of the Opposition, during an address at Claudelands last night. They wanted to join with the Empire in making better conditions of life for humanity. However, higher standards meant greater obligations. The goods necessary to create those standards had to be produced and delivered. The party’s first consideration, therefore, must be the family man. The foundations of the State were built round him. He needed security, freedom to live his own life, room for his family to grow up in comfort—opportunities for them to develop in a young but growing country—and a good wage that would provide the amenities of life.

There was a suggestion that the by-election should be a test of this family income proposals the Government intended to bring down. This was nonsense as the National Party had always stood for a steady wage to enable a man and his wife to live and rear their children in security and comfort. It would extend that protection to widowhood and invalidity. He would say that justice to the small farmer and the small shopkeeper who did not earn £3OO or £4OO a year demanded that the man who did earn it in thirty weeks should not receive £5 10s a week for the other twenty.

The young men of the National Party had a policy differing in many respects from that of their predecessors. They put human happiness first in their programme, based on the rule of law, believing in the achievement of it through the competitive system backed by remedial legislation and just administration. A vote of thanks, proposed by Mr H. W. Brant and seconded by Mrs J. Ballin, was carried unanimously.