VIGOROUS ATTACK

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 169, 10 March 1932, Page 5

VIGOROUS ATTACK

("Post" Special Commissioner)

"SHiLLY-shallylng" FORMER MINISTER SEVERELY CRITICISES COALITION GOVERNMENT DOESN'T KNOW WHAT TO DO

WELLINGTON, Wednesday. • A vigorous attack on the Government, which he described as "procrastinating and shilly-shallying," was made by the Independent member for Nelson, Mr. H. Atmore, in the House of Representatives to-day. ' Although speaicing as an ex-Minister Mr. Atmore said he was not speaking in any spirit of disappointment. He described the tactics nsed at the last general elections as the dirtiest he had ever experienced. Mr. Atmore said that he was a Liberal, and notwithstanding the fact that that Party was very sparsely represented in the present Parliament, there was a great middle party in New Zealand which would spring to life the moment there was any indication of a new organisation. The present Government was not a coalition, but it was an absorption of the old Liberal Party by the Reform Party. The first act of the Coalition GovPrnmnt had been to abolish the graduated land tax, which the present Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. G. W. Forbes) Had deciared a few years before tp be the chief distinguishing jdank between the Reform and Libefal Parties. If one Itfoked along the Minlsterial henches, one would see at once that all the important nortfolios had

had been given to Reform members. National Government Favoured "I am still in favour of a National Government," said Mr. Atmore, "but this Coalition was formed to fight Labour, and was never intended tp be a National Government; otherwise an invitation would have been sent to the Labour Party in the first place. "The Government went to the country asking for an unf ettered authority, not for the right to place all its responsibilities on to commissions. Now that the Government has an unfettered authority "it does not know what to do with it. 'It is lilce the little boy who was given a lassoo. He went outside and lassooed a bulldog, but did not know what to do with it. The Government asked for a blank cheque but they have left the filling in of the cheque to a lot of commissions and committees." The Prime Minister had stated that if he could borrow on the London market, he would do so, apparently on the seexirity of New Zealand's wealth, Mr. Atmore continned. Surely if he

was willing to do that, he could justify the issuing of Treasury notes to the value of £5,000,000 or £7,000,000. "The present Government is not a National Government in any sense of the word," said Mr. Atmore, "but it is a procrastinating, shilly-shally-ing Government which has no claim to he the custodian of the executive power of one and a-half million people. Time was when New Zealand led the whole world, but to-day she is lagging sadly behind." Bankers In Control. Referring to unemployment, Mr Atmore said that machines should be the servants of mankind, and not the destroyer. When last year he had advocated a reduction of expenditure he had been told that that was a darigerous thing to give out to the. people, but .the Government should know full well that it could not empl - y men for eight hours a day under present conditions. It was true, he continued, that the present Cabinet was composed very largely of farmers, but the real fact was that it was the bankers who were aetually controlling the position. The Prime Minister should know that the only way to keep prices constant was by judicious control of the .'urrency. The two leaders of the co "> try — he sometimes wondered if there were not three, judging by the many utterances of Sir James Parr — were preaching the old science of economies and not the new economies of plenty and wealth. The whole trouble in the- world to-day was that thc science of production had destroyed the science of distribution and the science of distribution was held in check by the bankers.