STRONG PROTEST

Hokitika Guardian, 2 May 1932, Page 6

STRONG PROTEST

TOO MANY COMMISSIONS

MR J 7 CONNOLLY’S REMARKS

(By Telegraph-—Per Press Association.)

WELLINGTON, April 30

Government by commissions was strongly condemned by Mr J. Connolly (Coalition, Mid-Canterburvj in the House of 'Representatives yesterday •afternoon. H'here are men in the Bouse with better knowledge and more practical experience than the members of the commissions which we have had, land I want to enter a very strong protest,” he said.

Mr Connolly, speaking on the third reading of the National Expenditure Adjustment Bill, said he thought that the Government should at least be given credit for the interest and rent reductions. The Government had yielded <to popular opinion a inf done a thing that it had been stated was impossible of fulfilment. He thought that -the Government was in duty bound to promise the Civil Servants an increase in wages as soon as reasonably possible. They had suffered a reduction of 10 per cent, in wages 12 months before they received any relief in rent and interest.

There could be no doubt that there was truth in the statement that the standard of living in New Zealand had been lowered, said Mr Connelly, but in three years before the depression, some £35,000,000 had been borrowed, ft. was now up to the Dominion to make the greatest possible use of the money and take the best advantage of its opportunity.

“The position would improve if the Prime Minister and Cabinet relied on the elected representatives of the people instead of going outside,” he said. “I see plainly that the best use has not been made of the money. ’ The public service and old age pensioners would submit with good grace to sacrifices if they could only be shown a way out of the difficulties. The Government was making no forward move in any way. It could not repeat its taxation proposals and it could not impose these* hardships- on the people again.

"Every section of the community is making sacrifices, and owing to the low prices of our produce we cannot pay much longer the interest on our national debt,” he continued. “If we export foodstuffs at a low price to the country that we borrowed from are we not doing a national service to that country? Are we not in just about the same position as the mortgagor and mortgagee? It is up to the people of England to do something for us, because we give them cheap foodstuffs.”

Another reason advanced by Mr oCnnolly for .sympathetic action by Britain was that New Zealand had relieved .that, country of 80,000 immigrants. If those people had not come to New Zealand there would have been that additional number of unemployed in ■England. The only way the position could be satisfactorily dealt with was by putting in the hands oi members the power .that was rightly theirs, and dropping the commissions.