PROVISION OF HOUSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 54, 1 February 1938, Page 7

PROVISION OF HOUSES.

NATIONAL PARTY’S PLAN. Per Press Association. AVELLINGTON, Jan. 31. “The misrepresentation of plain facts has become a sort of garden-party recreation for the Leader of the National Party (Hon. Adam Hamilton),” said the Prime Minister (Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage), referring in a statement issued to-day to the National Party’s housing policy. “The latest example of this mischievous relaxation is Mr Hamilton’s outline of his party’s so-called plan of housing for the people. This outline revealed no plan, but it did mean wholehearted support for such features as complete reliance on private enterprise and unrestricted support of the ‘jerrybuilder,’ speculator, glib salesman and unemployment subsidy exploiter “Experience proves the fairness of that description of the National Party’s bousing ‘plan.’ It is not even a real effort to atone for a sorry record. The National Party is still without a plan to help the thousands of people who, as a result of the deliberate policy of Kir Hamilton and his friends, have been compelled to herd in improvised flats and apartment houses and are paying more for one room in Wellington than the maximum rent of a five-roomed house under the present Government’s scheme. In fact, the Nationalists’ housing plan is simply a belated expression of remorse over a discreditable past. “Mr Hamilton 6ays the Labour Government’s housing policy has, according to public .opinion, been proved a failure. His *av ment in support of his statement is so nebulous and stupid that one wonders why he was betrayed into signing it. His assertion that the Government has had to pick its tenants from men in well-paid positions is so absurd that there is no need for any detailed disproof. It is simply untrue. “Mr Hamilton’s further charge that the Government’s incursion into the field of house-building has practically wrecked an industry previously carried on bv private enterprise is equally absurd What wrecked the building industry more than anything else was the National Government’s cessation of State Advances loans during the depression at the very time when any Government with a "rain of .common sense would have made credit fullv and freelv available for this purpose, added Mr Savage.