N.Z. WORKERS’ SHARE OF NATION INCOME FALLING BEHIND

Grey River Argus, 4 September 1948, Page 3

N.Z. WORKERS’ SHARE OF NATION INCOME FALLING BEHIND

WELLINGTON, Sept. 3. In the House of Representatives this morning, Dr. A. M. Finlay (Government, North Shore), resuming his Budget speech, said that there was some doubt as to whether the workers’ share of the national income was increasing rapidly enough in relation first, to prices, and, secondly, to the income of other sections of the community. That was one reason for restoring our currency to sterling parity, b.ut it would not be sufficient to see that the intention to reduce prices immediately was carried out. What was now required was a specific increase- in the workers’ share of New Zealand’s national income. On the available statistics, the increase should be transferred from the employers, and the employers generally could afford ’it, although some employers were less prosperous than others. The particular aim during the transitional period allowing the exchange move should ne to abolish anomalies within the present wage structure by -lifting the incomes of the lower-paid workers and by allowing increased margins for skill. This involved, first, an increase in the present basic wage. The next step was to adjust the wage system more thoroughly and might call for reconsideration of the whole Arbitration Court system as it now operated. Dr. Finlay said that whatever was done to lift the wages of workers on the lower incomes, and then to increase the workers’ total share of the national income, must be done at the cost of the employers concerned. If an employer could not afford by increasing his productive efficiency to pay a reasonable wage, he should go and make his staff available to more efficient units of production. Where necessary, a direct Government subsidy should be paid to essential undertakings, which could not otherwise afford to .pay higher wages, or, better still, they should bp carried on by the State as a public monopoly. New Zealand’s prosperity was now such that the time was never more suitable for further systematic measures of planned democratic Socialism. He thought the. best! prescription for New Zealand was, "the mixture as before’’~a continuation of those prudent doses of Socialism which the Government .had administered in the past and which had made the patient thrive. An Opposition voice: Heaven forbid. LEFT OF LEFT!

Mr J. R. Hanan (Nat., Invercargill) said Dr. Finlay should be commended for such a frank disclosure of his party’s ultimate aims. Dr. Finlay had said the whole of the Labour Party were Left Wingers, but he was very much to the Left of the Left; in fact, almost '“over the edge.” Dr. Finlay’s claim that the Labour Party was the true inheritor of the Liberal tradition, was an audacious, . grotesque hallucination. Two fundamental concepts of Liberalism were preservation and extention of personal liberty and subordination of class interests to those of the Communists. Dr. Finlay, it seemed, sincerly believed it possible to build Socialism within a free democracy. Mr G. F. Sim (Nat., Waikato). That’s his new belief. Mr Hanan said that if. Socialism were to go beyond a certain point, it could be achieved only within “democracy” as the Russians-understood it —at' the secrafice of personal freedom. which could not survice in the form of Socialism envisaged by Dr. Finlay.