Truth THE PEOPLES PAPER THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1928. Whitewash On The Wall

NZ Truth, Issue 1179, 5 July 1928, Page 6

Truth THE PEOPLES PAPER THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1928. Whitewash On The Wall

THE danger about a "flying Parliament is that it is apt to utilize artificial means of respiration. Election year is that essentially whitewashing period when the gnawing paiigs of political selfpreservation forget all but the almighty scrounge for "food." The argument invariably raised against those who oppose existing fqrms of government is that the public is, after all, responsible for the government it elects. There never was a theory more irreconcilable with practice. The truth is that the public is not allowed to judge the political situation from both sides, and these three little points constitute the danger triangle. (1). The present Government has the use of aii almost illimitable purse; (2) that purse belongs to the public; (3) the Government has a monopoly of the daily press m this country. "With the studied, subservience Of facts and political truth by the present Government, and the careful substitution of deliberate propaganda to support their cause, the public can scarcely be blamed for making a ballot-box decision on what the propaganda sheets have compelled them to swallow as a. very beneficial and delectable sugar-coated pill. Gordon Coates Was allowed out —or, rather, in— on probation three years ago. - His political latitude was essentially conditional, but no figure m local Jiistory has shown up so dismally as Coates, since, m a fit of hysterical rashness, the elector handed him the open cheque, trusting to his six feet of manhood and forgetting the administrator. It cannot be supposed that Coates is hot now fully aware of the strong current of public opinion surging against him. It may be that he will even find himself still privileged to play with the public's purse-strings with a slender toitch-and-go majority, but nothing can be said to refute the belief that both Coates and his present top-heavy organization of priceless bunglers and political incoilsequentials are unpopular with the masses. For the coming diction "N.Z. Truth" would like to see a more generous distribution Of political truth and a broader outlook by politicians. Life is so short and politics, like art, so long, that puny party ( quibblings, individual pot-hunt-' ing and dark political schemes against the best interests of the multitude can, only leave their perpetrators with a deuce of a load on their consciences when the sand has filtered through the glass 6f time. We should reconstruct Coates' very expensive slogan — and then live up to it: "More honesty m politics and less business m Government*"