MR. SAVAGE AT "HOME."

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 93, 6 May 1937, Page 4

MR. SAVAGE AT "HOME."

Our new Prime Minister, on his first visit to the Old Country, has been received with the same courteous cordiality that has marked the first official reception there of all our Prime Mtuisters, irrespective aitogether of what their political cclour might be, That is regarded as being entirely a matter for the people of Dominion to decide and in no way affects the character of the welcome, which has been the same in succession for tDick,\ Seddon, Moe' 5 Ward, "BiU" Massey, Gordon Coates, George Forbes and now for "Mickey" Savagc. Each has eome to represent the far-off young country whic.0 we ourselves fondly believe to be the favourite white-haired l'ttle boy among the Mo&ier Country 's brood ox self-governing oominions. British statesmen are proverbially good and respectfui listeners, and Mr. Savage is" well assured in advance qf a polite end sympathetic audience for all the much he will no doubt have to s'ay- — none the less, perhaps all the more, because he is so much of a tyro at the game of government. As to what Mr. Savage has had to say on settingfoot on England's shore, it was not to be expected that there would be" very much i» lt that we out here have not heard before on many more than one occasion. Nor. is it all likely to be entirely new to those wbc keep themselves fairly well informed upon what is being said and done in the.various oversea dominions. It consisted i' ainly in the generalities with which we here ari all getting very familiar to the point of irritation at being denied some more specific indications as to the future. More especially is this the case with regafd to matters of finance, upon which, Labour leaders themselves at election time laid so much emphasis as being the foundation of the.r policy. As to what the Government's real iptentions are on ihis vital subject it seems impossible to extract ahy reall/ intelligible information, Nor is anything of the kind to be drawn from Mr. Savage 's first utterances at Home, He has thought it necessary to refer again to a solitgry press attack on New Zealand's credit. Ihis is, of course, si pietty safe line to take, when no one was paying any rea} atcention to the assault. Like Mr. Nash in the first instance, • he paid an unconscious tribute to the Goveernments that haye gone before his own by speaking qf the stability of the Dominion'* finance*, for no one can say that the present Government has as yet done anything in the way of strengtiv ening them. There is little pride, for instance, to be occasioned by showing for last financial year a 'surplus" of £1QO,OQO as the result of collecting from the. people an ektra £44" ruillion in taxation, while at the same time spending some £6million of boyrowed money, on which interest will have to be . paid this and all following years, though there may, be no compensating return for it. And, so f ar as qne may see, this process is to go on for at least another five years — if I,abour is allowed to continue in office. As proof of the souudness of the financial postiion Mr. Savage then points to the Dominion 's ample "monetary re- • serves" established in -London. He did not, however, think it incumbent on him to point out also that this is the result of an exceptionally favourable realisation on the qpunfry's ekports to the British market— wool in particulart Nor did it oeeiir to him to let out. as is currejitly rumpnred here, that it |s against these same reserves^ — supposed to be kept sapredly in liquld form to meet all emergencies — that he proposes to •draw on the Reserve Bank for the £5*milliou required for his housing scheme — about as "frozen" a form of investment as ' qould be fotind for it. This has nolhiug to say of the six o? seven million overdraft from the same source on the "guaranteed price" account, on which a loss of another couple of * million is' foretold. It is then in the customary vague way too, that Mr. Savage speaks of having "our own money system based on our own production" — wha^ever that may mean. There is no falk, however, as to the way in which the productive capacity of of the country, on which he depends, was buHt up. It eertainly was not, nor coujd it ever have been, under the system of universal, State control for which he and his colleagues stand, It is essentially tlie result of the individual and, later, CO»aperative eriterprise and energy which the present Government is admittedly out to stifle in favour of "socialising all means of production, distribjition and exchange." ' Finally Mr. Savage says "we are not going -to be harnessed to the chariot wheels of other countries," when none should know better than he that no cpuntry in the world is more dependent for its prosperity than is ours upon markets other than its own. , There is sttrely about all this a good deai of the holjowness Mounding 'brass nad tinkling cymbal."