The Press MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1938. Mr Hamilton's Speech

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22516, 26 September 1938, Page 10

The Press MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1938. Mr Hamilton's Speech

Electors who wish to form a reasoned estimate of the relative merits of- the two political programmes which are now before them will find their task much clarified if they begin by taking the advice which the leader of the National Party, the Hon. Adam Hamilton, gave at the beginning of his policy speech in Christchurch on Friday evening. Mr Hamilton's advice was to concentrate on essentials and not to base judgments on matters of detail. The Prime Minister has said that the two issues in the election are the social security scheme and guaranteed prices, meaning that he would like the election to be confined to these issues to the exclusion of certain other issues which he is manifestly anxious to keep hidden. The elector who votes for or against Labour because he likes or dislikes some aspect of the social security scheme is finding a short and dishonest way out. of his duty as a responsible citizen, which is to decide, on the basis of the Labour Party's aims and of its methods as revealed in three years of office, whether he prefers it to the National Party. The first and principal aim of the Labour Party is set out as clearly as could be wished in its constitution: it is the socialisation of the means of production, distribution, and exchange. Every act of a Labour Government is related to and subordinate to this main objective; and any attempt by Labour speakers to remove it to the remote future or to obscure it by references to the Socialism of previous governments can be rejected as political dishonesty. It is quite true that in New Zealand there is more State enterprise than there is in, say, Great Britain or the United States; but it is a wilful misreading of history to suggest that extensions of State enterprise imply approval of socialistic doctrines. The Labour Party is not committed to bring in State Socialism; it is committed to bring in the Socialist State. In the light of that one commitment its whole policy must be judged. For the average elector, the task of judging Labour's policy is perhaps easier than the task of judging Labour's record in office, since the second requires some detailed knowledge of political and economic events in the last three years. That the country has enjoyed exceptional prosperity in these three years will not be denied; but it is important to remember that the basis of this prosperity, and of the huge expansion of public expenditure under the present Government, has been the phenomenally rapid rise in export income from the low levels touched in the depression. The Government's opponents claim that it has retarded recovery by raising costs; its apologists claim that increased wages for the workers have outstripped rises |in the cost of living and that increased prices for primary produce have more than compensated the farmers for increased overhead expenses. The recent development "of the guaranteed prices scheme has dealt a devastating blow at the Government's case. Unanimously, the Guaranteed Prices Advisory Committee, which the Government itself appointed, has recommended the payment to dairy farmers of prices which are so high that the Government cannot afford to pay them. As Mr Hamilton shows very clearly, the net effect of the guaranteed prices scheme, has been to throw into glaring relief the inability -of -the Government to shelter the dairy farmers against the rise in costs for which it is in a large measure responsible. It is now hardly possible to deny that, throughout the primary industries as a whole, the margin between costs and prices is rapidly narrowing; and the plain meaning of this is that the conditions which made possible the boom of the last three years are being endangered.