WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 16 December 1929, Page 8

WELLINGTON TOPICS

THE HUTT CONTEST. Mil COATES TAKES A HAND. (Special Correspondeut.) WELLINGTON, Dec. 13. The Right Hon. J. G. Coates, the leader of the Reform Opposition, opened his campaign in the Hutt bye-election at the beginning, of the week with a rousing speech at Eastbourne where, on a previous occasion, owing no doubt to the disagreeable weather, his nominee in tho fray, Mr Harold Johnston, had faced only a poor audience. Mr Coates, at any rate, succeeded in holding the attention of “a packed house” for a couple of hours and securing a very hearty assurance of “confidence” from the audience. Mr Johnston provided an appropriate curtain raiser in a little speech of half-an-hour or so before leaving to speak in another part of the electorate an din departing raised the audience to high good humour by announcing that any questions put to himself would be answered by Mr Coates. Botli the Leader and the follower were in aggressive mood and did not mince the language in which they denounced, lock, stock and barrel, their ooponents REFORM’S HOPE. Mr Johnston, very properly and very effectively, devnW the main part of his little speech to the virtues and the talents of his leader, whom, he said, had years of activity before him and he was destined to take a prominent place among tho foremost statesmen of the Dominion. He made time, however, to say that, when Sir Joseph Ward announced to the simple people of Auckland that ho would borrow sixty millions of money for settlors at four and a half per cent, and let it out at four and threequarters per cent, he knew perfectly well this could not be done and had no intention' of doing it. The assertion was warmly applauded by the audience and the speaker passed on to other instances of United’s duplicity. Mr Johnston lias a. good presence on tho platform, speaks confidently in the assertive manner of his profession, and is, not disturbed by interjections; but all his practical politics and his history still have to he learned. LEADER AT LARGE.

As the leader of the Opposition, Mr Coates-, .takes many more liberties with facts than he did as head of tho Government. Following Mr Johnstons recital of the misdeameanours of the United and the Labour parties ho emphasised them at every turn. It is with figures, however, that he takes his greatest latitude, and here, of course, he is beyond the understanding of the great majority of his audience. At Eastbourne with the ever ready Year Book in his hand he told Mr Johnston’s audience that the prosperity of the Dominion began with the advent of the Reform Government in 1912 and that this prosperity already was waning as a result of the mal-administration of the United Government. He quoted figures which purported to show that Reform had won the last general election hut had been deprived of its just dqserts by some occult juggling between the Uni teds and the Labourites. It still was the largest party in the House, he declared, find the best qualified to occupy the Treasury Benches. And so on and so on. THE FACTS.

One example must suffice to illustrate the methods by which Mr Coates reaches his conclusions. By opening the Year Book for 1929 at page 317 instead of at page 318 he managed at Eastbourne to persuade himself that the increase in the volume of the Dominion’s exports between 1914 and 1928 was from the equivalent of £25,984,717 to the equivalent of £54,184,545, an increase approximately of 120 per cent, But had he desired to inform his audience as to the facts of the position he would have told it that at the prices prevailing before the war those exports of £54,184,545 would have been worth only £33,004, 086 or approximately only 21 per cent more than the exports of 1913. The purpose of confusing the involved figures obviously was to convey the idea that production had increased more rapidly under the Reform than under the Liberal administration. Facts show the very reverse to have been the case.