The Press TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1938. National Party Manifesto

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22511, 20 September 1938, Page 8

The Press TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 1938. National Party Manifesto

The National Party's manifesto, outlining the policy on which "the party will base its appeal to the electors, insists upon the reality and importance of the issue. Socialism or private enterprise. Leaders in the Government, such as the Hon. D. G. Sullivan and the Hon. P. C. Webb, have anxiously and angrily endeavoured to disguise the Socialist direction and aims of the policy they stand for; and electors have been able to see with amusement that their anxiety betrays them. They are anxious because they know that the Socialism to which their party's platform explicitly commits them, and which their legislation has advanced by large instalments, has no hold on popular conviction, and has only to be nakedly recognised, as threat or as fact, to be rejected. The National Party manifesto brings the threat and the fact plainly into view in its references to the Gov-, ernment's measures, for example, in the control of production and distribution, in national transport, in housing, and so on. But the manifesto would carry an inadequate appeal if it did not set out the Nationalist alternative in particular as well as general terms. Electors who study it to learn what the National Party proposes to do—and not to do—-will find full indications not merely of principles but of a programme, and these, it is to be expected, will themselves be elaborated in the policy speeches of the Hon. Adam Hamilton and his colleagues. In the meantime, certain points will be noted with special interest. Introduced by a wise remark upon the dangerous folly of mortgaging, the future without assuring its strength, there are 'important, references to schemes designed to encourage and assist the establishment of homes and families. The most novel feature of these schemes is the device of loans on easy terms to enable" young couples to furnish their homes, while the capital sum is written down, at the birth of each child, until it is extinguished on the birth of the third. As most novel, this,, will probably, attract most attention; but decisions of greater .weight, perhaps, are those that appear in the policy of helping citizens to build houses and own them •and in the promise of a revival of immigration. But families will not be reared, no matter what secondary encouragements are offered, unless the economic system of the country provides room and opportunity. The National Party pins its faith to the ability of industry to make this provision, given reasonable freedom to plan and organise; and the lines of Nationalist policy here are, accordingly,'that the main functions of the, State shall be to co-operate, rather than to control, to afford such guarantees of stability and security as it can, to regulate primarily for the v prevention of abuses, arid to minimise taxation'ori the sound rule that private spending is better than State spending. References in the manifesto to the National Party's alternative to the present guaranteed price scheme should be read in the light of these principles. The same is to be said of the references to public-works, to transport policy, and to taxation; and if, overburdened taxpayers are, ydisappointedf by "the abserice specific pro : mises of tax reductions, it" may be suggested to them that a manifesto .is ho¥ a budget, and that it "is' more 'creditable to promise* cautiously, -as Mr Hamilton does now, than recklessly, as the present Government "did three years ago. In consistency with the National Party's policy of co-operation with industry and Df providing such guarantees of .stability ; and security as it can is the outline of the plan which it proposes to substitute for the Government's Social Security Act. Its main features are: (i) it confines free, general health services to sections unable to pay for them; (ii) it establishes universal superannuation, on the basis of the present (8d) unemployment contributory tax rate, with exemption (if desired) for classes already protected by superannuation schemes; and (iii) it sets up a Ministry of Social Welfare, to promote the physical fitness of the people, Especially by care of adolescents, by nutritional research and teaching, and by the development of preventive measures against sickness and disease.. The National Party may be:congratulated on its pfdmpt and definite justification of its claim, in the recent debate, to be in sympathy with the principle of universal superannuation—a claim which the povernment affected to ridicule; and it may be congratulated as warmly upon the constructive sense which has led it, first, to limit free general medical service to the field in which it may usefully be developed, and second, to bring into due prominence the task of building a fit race and "maintaining its fitness. There is much an. the manifesto that testifies to high, and wise purposes and promises, in their fulfilment, great gains to the community; .put no party could declare a higher and wiser aim than this last, and the National Party will have trie credit of every thoughtful elector for it.