“PEOPLE’S VOICE”

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20111, 4 December 1939, Page 11

“PEOPLE’S VOICE”

MR. NASH IN REPLY “UNSEEN ORGANISERS” ATTACK ON GOVERNMENT RETARDING WAR EFFORT NEED FOR CO-OPERATION (Pur Press Association.) WELLINGTON, this day. Commenting in ironic vein on the "new movement of the people” and its first manifestation in Wellington in a meeting -on Tuesday night, the Hon. W. Nash says his objectives and the declared ‘objectives of the unseen organisers have so much in common that he wonders why lie did not receive one of the prized invitations to attend. He scoffs at the meeting being held by invitation and wonders if the audience “really represented every class of the community.” If so. why the necessity for invitations? “But why wonder? This is just another attack on the Government and the .Government’s policy, just another spanner thrown into the national machinery at a time when the needs of Empire call-for co-operation instead of obstruction,” he said. “With what ’object? I cannot believe that any loyal body of men would purposely hinder the country and the Empire in their war effort; yet that would result if Macaulay’s laissez faire programme were put into practice.” Scrapping- of Benefits 'Mr. Nash comments that the world has travelled a long way since Macaulay. He would have found fault with New Zealand Government in the last 50 years and would have stigmatised as intermeddling toy the State pensions, factory' legislation, industrial conciliation and arbitration, public hospitals, Stale advances, free education, ancl equal opportunities in life. Did this new voice of the people, when it became articulate, propose to scrap all these benefits? lie summarised their attitude as: “We must not allow the Government to impede New Zealand’s war effort, so let us wreck the Government’s policy, and. if we can. smash the Government.” That at a time when the chief end of the Government's policy was fighting and winning the war, when the whole of the Government’s energies and resources had been placed at the disposal of the United Kingdom Government and the King. That was a curiously perverted form of co-operation, to say the least of it. “Behind Closed Doors” Mr. Nash said he did not object to criticism, but “when we and our opponents are in agreement on the dominant political issue of the day, the conduct of the war, we do not expect to he hampered in our efforts i to Wage the war successfully. Instead, we hope for co-operation and help. At the barest minimum, we are entitled to demand a cessation of pin-pricking irritation tactics which to some would-be politicians, passes muster for conslructive statesmanship.” When the people spoke, they did so without preliminary planning 'behind closed doors, Mr. Nash declared, and added that the people had spoken in the last three months clear and resolute, and that it was the duty of the Government to heed their voice and spend itself utterly in the cause to which the Empire was committed. By what authority and in what right did hidden groups seek to embarrass and hinder a Government engaged upon its simple duty?