The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, September 18, 1937. "NO CONFIDENCE” MOTION.

Grey River Argus, 18 September 1937, Page 4

The Grey River Argus SATURDAY, September 18, 1937. "NO CONFIDENCE” MOTION.

How the country now compares with its state a couple of years ago, anybody is able to tell fairly well. What nobody a couple of years ago could tell was what the state of the country would be today. In his long “ no-confidciiec ” motion the Oposition Leader made no comparison, for to do so would not suit his argument, but he did assert that the present Government came in at a most favourable period, and also that what it has done has been to worsen the situation. This is so great a travesty of the real results as io be very funny, and funnier still is his declaration that the credii for the dairy marketing policy belongs to somebody other than the Labour Party. The motion appears to have but one logical explanation. It is an attempt to blow alight again the dead embers of momentary agitations which comparatively small sections got up in their own interests with the object of gaining special concessions at the expense of everybody else. Mr. Hamilton condemns the Sales Tax, which his own Party enacted, and he pretends to lament a possibility of increased unemployment, because wages are not so low as they were before Labour came into power. “The Government,” he says, “has failed to honour its pledge to assist all able-bodied workers into employment.” Now this is precisely an instance where the average person can compare how many this Government has assisted into employment with the number whom Mr. Hamilton’s Government drove out of employment. He says that the Government has failed in its pledge to guarantee dairy farmers prices improving their living standard to a level comparable with that of other branches of industry. Well the average person is able to compare the dairy farmers’ standard of living now with the standard to which it had fallen under Mr. Hamilton’s Party when one of its leaders declared fifty thousand of the dairy farmers were bn the verge of bankruptcy. Mr. Hamilton, addressing the whole country over the radio, had the audacity to insinuate his Party did not get a fair deal under the

broadcasting policy. _ He must reckon people are as simple as the Nationalist Press took them Io be before last general election, when somebody “jammed” a radio station to gag criticism of Nationalist broadcasting policy and discrimination therein. Air. Hamilton calls for taxation cuts when the Nationalist example was to send the tax-gatherer 1 after the poorest of the poor. His Party is no more game to say it opposes guaranteed prices or restored wages than to admit that the Government in restoring purchasing power has restored prosperity, enabling the country to. pay better prices to producers or vendors of commodities, and the vendors and producers to pay more in taxation because of their increased turnover. It is humorous to read some apologists for the Opposition declaring everybody is finding prices very high, and at

the same time saying- that, Labour’s policy has brought it popularity. It is like saying that the dairy price guarantee is not successful because a similar thing is not being proposed for other exporters. It is not less, but more of a guarantee, that some dairy exporters want, while othesr are very well content. As for employment, it is remarkable that any political apologist, has the hide even to suggest a comparison. with a couple of years ago, for. factories to-day are prosperous which were then unable to employ nearly-as many. The cry to-day is not so much a shortage of jobs, as for men skilled to fill them. The masses are far better able to. pay the costs of living than they were in 1935. If the *

Opposition had to offer, any semblance of an alternative to the policy of Labour, its negative attitude would not be so disappointing. Ou its own principles, there ought to be at least some better possibility for the great majority than a return to the pauperism of the dole interlude. There ought/ to be some actual chance offered for at least a. hundred thousand people to become a little more secure than they were as wageearners, as unemployed, or as hard-up traders before Labour came into power. What Labour has done for everybody whose lot has been bettered in the lasttwo years the Nationalist “no confidence motion” ignores utterly. But the average person does not ignore it.