"BACK TO RUSSIA"

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 82, 4 October 1938, Page 6

"BACK TO RUSSIA"

LABOUR ATTACKED

MR. ANDREWS'S CAMPAIGN

Although there were numbers of interjectors in the audience, in the main Mr. J. W. Andrews, Nationalist candidate for Hutt, was given a good hearing when he addressed the electors in the Congregational Schoolroom,! Alicetown, last evening. The hall was crowded, there being about three hundred people present. Mr. W. J. Walter was in the chair. Mr. Andrews, after outlining some of the planks of the National Party's platform, said that the man below average was out tor Socialism; the man above average was against it. "Is that an insult?" asked an interjector. "It all depends whether you are above the average or not?" the candidate replied. "Who gave you £300 to start? You said down in Petone you were a Liberal," stated another member of the audience. The candidate said that one way to reduce costs would be by abolishing compulsory unionism. "Do you like compulsory unionism?" he asked. (Cries of "Yes.") He had addressed numbers of working men and girls in their lunch hour and they did not seem too keen on compulsory unionism, said the candidate. The Socialists had built houses at terrific prices and had let them at rentals that might or might not be economic, depending on the costs. The National Party believed in advancing money at the lowest possible rate sq that the individual could have the opportunity of owning his own house. The question of defence was above party, stated the ■ candidate. He believed in co-operation with Australia and Britain and co-ordination of all services. "Have we not got that now?" asked a member of the audience. "I do not know; we have some Cabinet Ministers who were not too sympathetic at one time," Mr. Andrews replied amid applause and some dissent. The candidate stated that he did not particularly want to be involved in this election, but he had answered the call because Mr. Nash had let the district down and sacrificed it on the altar of his party by his refusal to pay permit fees on the houses that the Government was building. (Vigorous dissent.) Mr. Andrews said that all the big industries in the district were languishing at the moment. "Is the building trade languishing?" a questioner asked. "The small builder is languishing," the candidate replied. He added that the output of every motor industry was less than last year. "Have you been down to the railway workshops?" said another questioner. Mr. Andrews answered that some Hundreds of extra men were employed in the workshops, but the continuity of their employment depended on whether the taxation to pay their .wages could be found in the country. An expansion of public works was not the way to cure unemployment. The candidate vigorously attacked the Social Security Act and said that by joining a lodge or taking out an insurance policy the average person could do a great deal better in many respects than under the scheme. Mr. Andrews said that the Government did not pay skilled workers the wages it made private employers pay. He had received many letters from people in Petpne after his meeting there last Thursday, said the candidate, and they had pointed out that although they had voted Labour before they were going to vote for him because,of this interference with the right of free speech. Mr. Andrews concluded his speech with an attack on "union bosses," who, he said, were receiving almost the highest rate of income from the 3d and 6d a week paid by workers. ."The question is Socialism and back ; to Russia or freedom and back to Britain," he said. Mr. Andrews was accorded a hearty vote of thanks and was cheered, but there was some counter-cheering.