REFORM AND HOUSING

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 140, 10 December 1929, Page 13

REFORM AND HOUSING

LOAN POLICY CRITICISED

Mr. Harold Johnston (the Beform candidate) had declared that the Boform Party stands for building houses for the people, said Mr. Nash (Labour candidate) at Da^'s Bay last night. But the Hon. Downie Stewart, the late Minister of Finance in the Boform Government, had asked in Parliament. "Do you think wo are going to build houses for everybody?" And in two years the Beform Government had cut down the loans granted by the State Advances Department from £2,500,000 to less than £500,000. And the Beform Government increased the interest rate from 4$ per cent, to 5 per cent. The actual difference to the worker spending £1000 on building a home amounted to £375 over the whole period of the loan.

A voice: "It will be 04 per cent, when tho Labour Party "gets into power.'' Mr. Nash: "No, we will loan tho money to the people at the lowest possible rate to the actual cost of raising the nionoy and administering the Department. '' The voice: "That is what tho Reform Party did." •Mr. Nash said that that was not tho case. When the Eeform Party was in office, taking into account the amounts borrowed at 3 per cent., the annual cost of the State Advances loan money was £4 2s 7d per cent.; while the cost of administration was 2s lid per cent. Let them even add Ss Id to that, making it 5s per cent.; and it was clear that the Beform Government, instead of raising tho interest rate to 5* per cent., could easily have lent tho money at £4 7s 6d per cent. But tho Labour Party had not urged that; it had urged that the rate should be 5 per cent. At the same time the Beform Government had also hit the workers by reducing tho Tato of interest paid by the Post Office Savings Bank.