LABOUR'S PLATFORM

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 45, 4 November 1946, Page 5

LABOUR'S PLATFORM

MR R. BOORD'S CANDIDATURE

SUCCESSFUL THORNTON MEETING

Mr D. Alexander presided over a meeting of electors in the Thornton Hall last Saturday when Mr R. Boord, Labour candidate for the Bay of Plenty addressed an audience estimated at eighty people.

"A system of maximum and minimum prices for farm produce will take from the farming community the security it enjoys at present," said Mr Boord. "The farmers personal income is located at the top of the structure of any price he receives and it must follow that when prices recede from the maximum promised by the National Party to the minimum, the farmers own personal income must suffer."

Such a system said Mr Boord, was a return to the old costs which had always beset farming industry in the past—the rising and falling of prices and could never give to the industry the security of income and land tenure that it enjoyed at present under the stability of the guaranted price. The candidate dealt fully with farming problems and spent some time in refuting the allegations made by the Opposition with regard to the lump sum payments and the stabilisation subsidies. It had been said that if returned to power the right of freehold title would be abolished, declared Mr Boord—this was definitely untrue. He pointed out that every day returned servicemen were being settled on properties and could obtain the freehold titles if they so desired. The only concern of the Labour Party was to keep the farmer secure in his tenure, be it freehold or leasehold, by maintaining the stability of the prices he received for his produce.

He handled the subjects of education, housing, rehabilitation, finance and taxation and pointed out that the national debt located at London must be paid sooner or later. Such repayments could only be made fey taxation.

Mr Boord said he did not agree with Mr Goosman who three days earlier, had stated at a campaign meeting at Henderson that it was a bad business to tax the people to pay off national debt. After an attentive and uninterrupted hearing the meeting closed with a vote of thanks to the candidate and confidence in the Government. The motion was moved by Messrs. H. C. Phillips and H. Johnson and carried without dissent.