POLITICAL NOTES

Hokitika Guardian, 27 October 1928, Page 5

POLITICAL NOTES

LAND SETTLEMENT. “By far the most important. legislation of last session, in my opinion, was the Government’s new scheme for facilitating land settlement. I think it is going to do more in the right direction . than any effort of recent years.”—The Minister for Public Works (Hon Mr Williams.)

SEDDON AND SOCIALISM. When Mr M. F. Lnckie, Reform candidate for\ Wellington South, was speaking on the extreme Socialist question at his meeting at Berhampore, an interjector claimed the late Mr Seddon as a Socialist, to which Mr Lnckie replied that it would be enough to make Mr Seddon turn in his grave to be coupled with the Labour-Socialist Party of the present day. Mr Seddon was one of the greatest individualists that had ever lived, hut his Socialistic proclivities were on much broader and more humane lines than those of the so-called Socialists of the present day.

THE REAL LIBERALS. Bpenlcnig at New Plymouth Mr C. E. Bellringer (Reform candidate for New Plymouth) said that he had been sent to Parliament thre years ago as a supporter of the Reform Party, and after that experience he was more than ever convinced that the Reform Party was the right Party to govern the country, and that despite the criticism of what had been done and of what had not been done, he contended that it accomplished good and substantial work. During that period, • for the first time in the history of .New Zealand politics, the Labour Party had become the official Opposition and the Liberals, who became the Nationalists, were the third Party, while one man who called himself the old Liberal, formed a fourth. The cardinal plank of Labour’s platform was the socialisation of the means of production, exchange, and distribution in the belief that that policy would bring the greatest good to the greatest number. The Reform Party believed in greater scope for individual achievement, though a great deal of criticism had been levelled against the Party for what was co i Isidore! socialistic legislation. As an old Liberal, he would say, that the Liberals were very strongly represented on the Reform side of the House to-dav, while supporters of Tory principles, though fast becoming extinct, were to be /found more on the Nationalist benches than on those of Reform.

BOXING THE COMPASS. “ I believe that their policy has been watered down simply for the purpose of the election.” declared the Hon. Mr Wright at Keiburn, in denouncing the pa inform of the Labour Party. He commented on the absence from the 1928 manifesto of the Labour Party of any reference to the socialisation proposals in the 1925 manifesto, and asked whether the electors were to assume that, they had been dropped altogether. “ I don’t think that the Party would box the compass on such a fundamental issue,” said Mr Wright. 41 It certainly would he striking their flag and showing the white colours, and 1 don’t • believe they would do that.” The Labour Party, he declared, had two inherent- platforms-, hoping to gain th support of the general body ot the electors. while also retaining the support oil’ its Socialist and Communist adherents, because clearly a Communist would not subscribe to such a milk-and-water policy as that at piesent issued hv the Labour Party. The programme outlined in the recent manifelso was based on principles which had been borrowed for electioneering purposes. In the other programme, which did not hide away the Socialistic policy, the Labour Party appeared in its true colours,