SOME CASUAL, COMMENT.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 25, 22 October 1937, Page 4

SOME CASUAL, COMMENT.

The debate of the last two or three days on Mr Nash's Budget has not produced anything of cftitstanding importance that seems to call for special discussion. It continues to be noteworthy only for the persistent way in which Ministers, from the Premier downwardjs, decline to give any specific or really informative replies to very pertinent questions that have been put to them. Listeners-in to the debate cannot but have been impressed with the way in which Mr Savage and his cplleagues, when such questions are put, seek refuge in broaj/ generalities and bare assertions, with accompanying flights of the self-praise which the copy-books used to tell us is no recommendation. The Budget itself, indeed, provides a very fair sample of all this, altording on matters of real concern only a compulsory minimum of the information the people were entitled to expect from it. In the absence of any special theme it may not be out of the way to browse through this week's parliamentary reports and pick out a few little ministerial and other statements that alford material for brief comment. First, we may take the Under-Secretary for Housing, Mr J. A. Lee's tilts at the Press, which he accuses of "misrepresentation, distortion and suppression," though the Ministers themselves have been given the very widest access to newspaper columns for putting their own views and publishing their own propaganda. How, it may be asked, does this freedom of public ex^pres'sion compare with the Government's own conduct of the brcadcasting service? Is it for instance, a fact that one religious body in Auckland was summarily deprived of a privilege it had previously enjoyed, while to "Uncle Scrim" a like privilege has been continued? •n * * Then mention of this reverend gentleman's familiar epithet prompts the question as to how, in such a short time, from being known only as a minister^f-the gospel, he has suddenly qualified himself for the position of Director of Commercial Broadcasting at a tidy. little salary of £1500 a year. Mr Lee may be asked whether it would be '"distortion" to say that this appointment is in the way of barefaced reward for services rendered to his party during the election campaign? * * * Then, again, is it not possible to suggest that Mr Lee himself is guilty of "suppression' when he stedfastly declines to alford the people whose money he is spending by the million any defmite information as to the cost of the dwellings he is building with it, the rents that are being asked for them and the basis upon which those rents have been assessed? He knows full well that the columns of every newspaper in the Dominion are open to him for this. purpose, yet he declines to make any use of them. Why? * * * Then, again, we have the Minister of Finance himself steadily refusing to make known the method by and terms upon which he is making use of the Reserve Bank — the people's bank! — to provide the funds wherewith these houses are being built, and in like manner preserving as a profound secret the sources from which, at the people's risk, he is drawing millions of loan money to enable Mr Semple to build railways that are never likely to pay their way, even if more con-* venient and more economical means of transport are, as is being done, forced off the roads, on which many millions have been spent to make them suitable for such traflic. * * • Mr Semple, on his part, inidignantly denies that the Government intends "gobbling up" all the transport services of the country. How does this square with the process of virtual conhscation of road services that fs going steadily on in all parts of the Dominion, or, more notable still, with his party' s basic principle of "nationalising all means of production, distribution and exchange." Is he forswearing that principle, or is he just indulging in a little "m isrepresentation" to suit the exigencies of the moment, because he recognises that the time is not yet quite ripe for the clean sweep in ultimate view?' * * • Then linally for the present, we have the Minister of Labour declaring emphatically that the foot-wear industry is really "at the peak" of prosperity and citing completely stale ftgures in support of his statement — one from which by the way he has been compelled to climb down with no great grace. Was he not thus making use of the Press, he, tooj has so loudly condemned for the purpose of putting forward a gross "misrepresentation," that, coming from an apparently authentic source, might well have passed muster with the public but for the watchfulness of the Manufacturers* Federation? * * • These are only a few, taken at random, of the many instances that might be cited . where Ministers have themselves been guilty of the very offences they attribute to the "capitalist" Press, but they will sufhce for the day.