SOMEWHAT CHASTENED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 76, 20 November 1931, Page 4

SOMEWHAT CHASTENED

Most elections are notable for something, either the length and virulence of the speeches, or the length without the virulence. They are notable for all sorts of things but chiefly for the fact that they turn the country upside down with all sorts- of people, like the walrus, talking of many things, and putting forward their individual and collective ideas as to how the confusion they have helped to create can best be set to rights. The election with which New Zealand is faced is notable for the comparative absence of ' the numerous magical panaceas for our political ills which are usually advanced when the time comes for the voters to show what they think about all the things their representatives have done or left undone while occupying the very comfortable .seats which are provided for a three year tenure in Parliament. In the past, every party has sought to outbid the other in the variety and ingenuity of its proposals for resloring the country and incidentally, catching votes. For some time past, ingenuity has been taxed to maintain the line of demarcation between the viewpoints of the Reform and Liberal partios so that each party might point to some differing point of policy to prove to its public that there is something between them besides a name. Labour, of course, has never been handicapped by this confusing family likeness, but rather sought to attract by presenting everything from as widely divergent an angle as possible. -The present election, however, has marked a very noticeable modification in the aggressive individuality which the different political parties have sought to give themselves. Faced with the strengthening of the Labour position, and unable any longer to maintain the flimsy partition which previously separated them, Reform and United have merged intd a Coalition, while Labour in its recently issued manifesto, is becoming a veritable sucking dove in comparison with its previous roarings. The general aggressiveness of the Labour policy and utterances appears to have undergone a marked modification and in several aspects its protruding angles have been softened, at least verbally. The nationaL isation of the me^ns of production, distribution, and exchange, which previously has figured so largely on the Labour bill-boards ,is now being mentioned very upobtrusively, if it is being mentioned at all, while although general criticism of the principle of salary cuts has been voiced by all Labour candidates, the earlier promises of a restoration iof the cuts are being mentioned in a very minor key, at present. The Coalition on the other hand, instead of its component parts trying so hard to be different, has issued a joint manifesto which briefly summed up, is an appeal to trust them sufficiently to send them back and then leave them to seek the remedy for our trpubles, at their leisure. This was certainly the means adopted by the National iparties in Great Britain, but although parallels are being drawn with the New Zealand position, they do not really exist. In EngJand the National Government numbers in its ranks, ieaders to whom the country was willing to entrust its future without any definite details of policy, but in New Zealand unfortunately, the calibre of our political Ieaders does not inspire the same confidence. Whatever may be the flnal decision, however, all the political parties in the field appear to be in somewhat chastened | mood, and i^ may be that out of this more reasonable frame of mind, some good for the country will eventuate.