WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 6 November 1922, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

REFORMERS AND LIBERALS

WHERE THEY DIFFER. SPECIAL TO GUARDIAN. AVELLINGTON, Nov. 3. Mr Massey and his supporters still are holding out the hand of friendship to the Liberals and inviting them to come over and help them. The “Dominion,” as in duty hound, is ardently hacking up the invitation of its political chief. “Much of it was already to be found ill the Reform programme,” it says of Mr Wilford’s new launched policy. “It cannot awaken much interest or enthusiasm that Mr Wilford should nrofess himself willing to do what Mr Massey aiid his supporters are already doing. There is one wav, however, in which Mr Wilford may still engage the public ear. Many people undoubtedly would be glad to know why lie and his associates arc running in opposition to the Relorm party, with whom they are so Strikingly agreed on almost all essential aspects of policy.” 'Though the stalwarts among the Liberals scoff at the suggestion that they arc really of the same political colour as Mr Massey and lis friends, Mr Vigor Brown and Mr Leonard lsitt arc not the only timid souls that have succumbed to the charmers.

WHY?

•Mr Wilford, who in the days cf his youth played cricket and football and various other games that make for the development of the sporting spirit, smiles broadly upon t!*e invitations to go over to the Reform camp. But he is not so complacent in regard to the contention that the policies of the two parties are the same. He has read Mr Massey’s “manifesto,” and save for lavish promises of gifts of good things to the electors he has found in it no policy at all. Even the Prime Minister’s promises, Mr Wilford points out, are now eleven years old arid still Unperformed, Jii bis speech in the Wellington Town Hall ill J(tlv 1911, lii which he unfolded the charter of his party, he undertook to lessen borrowing and taxation, reduce the cost of living, reform the Legislative Council, stop land aggregation, eliminate polit'cil influence and patronage from the Civil Service, establish industrial peace, cheapen money and stay the distribution of titles. The last item seemed to afford Mr Wiiford particular amusement. Titles under the Reform regime, he laughingly said, had grown almost as luxuriantly as had the public debt add the burden of taxation. ELECTORAL REFORM.

Referring to Mr Massey’s'failure to carry out bis promise in regard to electoral reform Mr Wilford becomes serious and judicial. "1 do not wish to suggest,’’ he says, “that the Prime Minister promised proportional representation fol ! the Lower House. H did say he thought this the ideal system of representation and it was hound to some sooiier or later. But he preferred that it should he tried on the Legislative Council first and that t l '" experience gained there should be turned to account in its application to the House of Representatives. In the Bill they ultimately placed oil the StatuteBook, Mr Massey and his colleagues took cafh to secure a majority for themselves in tile Council for five or six years arid it was on this account the Liberals opposed the measure. Our chief grievance against Mr Massey in this respect, however, is that ho lias refused to honour his promise to substitute something better for the second ballot. This is a distinct breach of faith, aggravated by the fact that the Prime Minister’s only purpose was to place the progressive parties at a disadvantage in the constituencies.” Here, Mr Wilford contends, is a disagreement between the parties quite vital enough to keep them apart. THE OTHER SIDE. The Prime MiMnister and his friends on their part, are not concerning themselves greatly about Opposition ’ criticism. Mr Massey is too old a campaigner to he drawn into unprofitable controversies. Long ago he frankly renounced the Conservatism of his early political youth and espoused a modified form of Liberalism which has expanded amazingly under his fostering hand. Were it not for the brakes applied constantly by one or two survivors of the old Conservative school and occasionally by the Reform Press , Mr M assay by this time might have been competing rather with Mr Holland than with Mr Wilford in the race toward-. revolutionary socialism. Nor is the espousal of advanced Liberalism, in parts, merely an electioneering pose on the part of the Prime Minister. He lias learned something of political economy as well as of party tactics since he first took office and could he have shed his “Tory” traditions a little earlier he might have been a much greater reformer than the title of his party implies. Stronger things have happened in the whirligig of polities.