The Press TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1938. Labour Pledges and Claims

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22523, 4 October 1938, Page 10

The Press TUESDAY, OCTOBER 4, 1938. Labour Pledges and Claims

If it may be said for any member of the Cabinet

that it is his habit to speak moderately and reasonably, it is to be said for the Minister for

Education, Mr Peter Fraser. .The extent of the Government's anxiety is accordingly indicated in Mr Fraser's Ashburton speech, which in wild exaggerations and absurdities exhibited his surrender to the pressure of a desperate situation.

He claimed that " no government has ever come " before the country with its pledges so fulfilled "as the present Government." When the Government's apologists make up their own list of the Labour Party's pledges and tick them off

against corresponding pieces of legislation, they are sufficiently audacious. They ignore the im-

portant pledges—a formidable total of obligations which the Government has made no

attempt to fulfil; and where they can produce the Statute Book in evidence, they ignore the difference revealed between the fat kine of promise and the lean kine of fulfilment. When Labour talks about its record of pledges and performances, it has to forget much and to magnify the rest; but it has been left to Mr Fraser to make the superlative effort in forgetting and magnifying. Against the whole background of New Zealand history—or was it world history?—the Minister for Education proclaimed that his Government had surpassed all others in honouring its bond to the electors. It is enough to say that the Government was under bond to give electors the moon. Having begun in this vein, Mr Fraser continued in it. The Social Security Act, he said, was '■ the most " important measure that had come before any "parliament." When the Prime Minister said that it had brought the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, it did not seem likely that anything more unbalanced could be said; but Mr Fraser has said it. The outrageous claim that pretends to be matter-of-fact is worse than the outrageous claim of rhetoric in bad taste. After this, it is not surprising to find Mr Fraser ready to repeat the nonsense of the dullest hacks in his party and declaring that "there is no way of "getting down costs except by cutting the "standard of living of the masses of the "people." If this stuff were true, then it would follow that the standard of living of the masses of the people could and should be raised, steadily and indefinitely, by continual increases of State expenditure—and taxation. It would follow that the State can spend more wisely and economically than the individual, and should take away ail his money to raise his standard of living for him. Even the Government has not dared to draw this grand principle from a. practice that is not far from applying it. But even Mr Fraser, in the Government's plight, has not been able to resist the use of this foolish argument for immoderate expenditure and against economically calculated expenditure—an argument which says nothing * less. It is a desperate plight which makes careful men reckless.