LABOUR’S POLICY

Hokitika Guardian, 5 November 1928, Page 2

LABOUR’S POLICY

(Otago Daily Times

Thk frankness with which Air Noil.soti, secretary of tlio Otago I.ahour Rep rose n tat ion Committee, expounds the hind policy of his party is to he welcomed. It is not likely, however, to he regarded with approval hy Mr Noilson's party leaders. Their design at the present time is to mask their policy and to represent it as being as far from revolutionary as the policies of the other parties are. Mr Harrison, the Labour candidate for Dunedin West, has been candid enough to admit that his party considered that an instrument of production such as land should tie the property of the eommunitv.

The secretary of the Labour Repreise.ntation Commit beo this morning amplifies this statement. He tells us quite plainly what is meant hy community ownership. Public parks, public streets, and railway tracks arc examples of ownership by the public. When, therefore, the principal of community ownership of the land, as proposed by the Labour party, is established, flic land of the country will be as free to all as the public parks are at the present time. AVe are not disjHised to quarrel with Air Ncilson’s definition. The socialisation of the means of ])roduction, which is one of the aims of the Labour Party, may mean what Mr Neilson says it moans. At least, it means that there shall he no such thing as the possession of land as private property. The land, wo are informed, is the gift of Clod just as the sunlight. The use of it must, therefore, be common to all.

The Labour Party’s objective, certainly. is very comprehensive. The land and all is on the land will he socialised. The ninholder’s property, the urban sites on which stand substantial warehouses. the workmen’s cottage, will all he taken over hv the State. There will no longer be any private interest in land in any shape or form. How the abolition of private ownership is to he effected has not been made clear. AVhether it is to be by expropriation the simple act of depriving the owner of his property and turning him out of possession—or through a process of sale and purchase, the owner will certainly be dispoiled. Tn the one case lie will lie robbed. Tn the other lie will he compelled to abandon what he lias toiled and saved to acquire and will liave to submit to the value which the State places on his property. That is one of the experiences which the owner of every home in the country has to look forward to undergoing after Labour has begun, as Air Holland puts it. “to write the laws of the country.”

This might not be suspected from the terms of the manifesto which the Labour Party recently addressed to the