PARLIAMENT

Lake County Mail, Issue 9, 23 July 1947, Page 5

PARLIAMENT

Points from Speeches

A wide range of topics was touched upon hy Mr T. L. Macdonald (National, Wallace), speaking in Parliament in the Address-in-Reply debate. The country had had eleven years of socialist Government, he said, and the farmers had had time to examine the record of the Government, and they had shown definitely that they did not like it. If the figures for country polling places were checked up it would be found that that statement wms very true. The Government had shown for some time that it knew it had lost support in the country areas, and it had introduced legislation to reduce the Parliamentary representation of the people in the country areas. Despite the fact that Government members had what was to them a more favourable set-up of electorates for the last election they were desperately anxious. As a result of the election the Government now had a reduced number'of seats and the position, 42 seats to 38, was the smallest majority the Government had had so far, “ and it is easy to see that they arc tremendously worried over the whole matter,” he remarked. Listing subjects that were to the

forefront to-day, Mr Macdonald ibentinned the extent and effect of inflation, both on the cost of living and on savings, and the effect of inflation on prices of essential goods. There were shortages of houses, clothing and footwear —a shortage of things that could be made from materials produced practically entirely in the country. The real reason for the shortages needed to be established so that the x )U blic would understand. There was the question of staffing difficulties in public institutions—in hospitals—and there was the difficulty, of securing manpower for public works. There was a scarcity of farm labour. “We all agree,” he said, “ that a vital need of this country is an increase in production of consumer goods. We talk of incentive pay —and in many cases have applied that principle—but we have a graduated scale of income tax so that the more a man earns the greater are his taxes and the rate increases as his income increases. We should devise some system of reversing the graduated scale so that people on productive work would be encouraged to reach the highest income and be assured that the rate of tax would not increase progressively.