MR. HOLLAND'S REPLY

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 128, 26 November 1929, Page 10

MR. HOLLAND'S REPLY

REFORM PARTY AND SALARIES

(By Telegraph.)

(Special to "The Evening Post.")

WESTPOBT, This Day.

Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Labour Party, handed to the Press the following rejoinder to Mr. Coates:—

; "In his reference to the salary reductions made by the Beform Government in 1922, Mr. Coates wholly evades the point made by me, that at the time the cuts were made the Budget for the previous year showed a cash balance of more than £6,000,000, while, the accumulated surpluses amounted to well over £23,000,000. He also evades my statement that while the Public Service cuts (according to the then Minister of .Finance) were estimated to save. £800,----000 to the State, tax reductions to wealthy land-owners and others were estimated to lose to the State more ;than £900,000 under the 1922 legislation, with nearly a quarter of a million additional under the legislation of 1923, clearly establishing that the remissions to a comparatively small number of wealthy taxpayers were made at the expense of Public servants. "Mr. Coates recalls the Reform Government's promise to the Public servants that 'their position would be reviewed at the earliest possible moment when the finances of the country permitted.' I have shown that in 1922 the finances of the country were in such a healthy condition that the salary cuts were wholly unnecessary and therefore unjustified; but still they were made. Furthermore, in later years, when nearly every member of Mr. Coates's Cabinet was proclaiming that the Dominion had turned the corner and that the Beform Party's administration had brought an era of prosperity, Mr. Coates" was persistently, and even inconsistently, resisting every endeavour to have salary improvements made. As late as the closing hours of the 1928 session he was leading his party into the lobby to vote down a motion for the restoration of the conditions o£ the 1920 agreement, made with the Public servants by his own Government; and on the' hustings in the same year he was declaring that no Public Service officer was then suffering from the effects of the Public Expenditure Adjustment Act. It may also bo well to recall that when the Post and Telegraph representatives in 1928 pointed to the fact that the income of the De-

partment exceeded the expenditure by over a million, and reminded the Govrnment of Sir James Parr's promise made in 1925 that success on a commercial basis would make the time opportune for urging salary improvements, they were told that notwithstanding what the profits of the Department might be in the future, the Government had decided that the existing maxima provided adequate remuneration for rank and file duties. That showed that Mr. Coates was determined to hold the Public servants down to the existing maxima.

"'Hansard' teems with division lists which emphasise this fact, and consequently Mr. Coates need not now be surprised that both the general public and Public servants are disinclined to take his death-bed repentance pronouncements of to-day as having any material foundation.

"It is conducive to merriment to find Mr. Coates pleading the excuse for his vote against the Labour motion and in support of the United Government that the motion was worded so as not to embarrass the Government. That ludicrous excuse has not any greater degree of sincerity than the right hon. gentleman's reasons for his unbroken record of administrative and legislative opposition to salary improvements; but if he felt that, unlike Mr. Wright and Mr. Samuel and Mr. Macrnillan, he could not support the motion, why did he not himself move a motion to express what he now says he and his party stand for? As-the Leader of the Opposition, he must have been called before myself or any other private member. The reason why Mr. Coates didn't so move is, of course, that any motion moved by him in condemnation ofa United Government failure to keep faith with the Public servants could only have constituted a repudiation of his own policy. His.vote to save the United Government was, after all, only a vote of justification of his own line of conduct.

"Finally Mr. Coates's gesture regarding the £100 bonus will not be likely to help him much, especially in view of the decision arrived at by his own party caucus. The stinging breach-of-faith charge made against him on the floor of the House in this connection by Mr. Harris, Eeform member for Waitemata, is sufficient comment at this stage."