CAME TO N.Z.

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 362, 25 October 1932, Page 2

CAME TO N.Z.

LOOKING FOR GLEAM r • « : 4 ECONOMIC DARKNESS INTEREST, AUSTRALIAN VISITOR. ADVANCE IN CIVILISATION. * " -TT — - ' l ' ... "I have come.to New Zealand hq.mbly and hopefully looking for a light j that will be a gleam in the economic i darkn.ess," said Mr. G. Fitzpatrick, I shperintendent of the New South Wales Community Hospital. "In Australia," he said, "we are told that if we get back to the gdld standard, have a high exchange rate, and a tariff wall, all will be well, New Zealand has all three but is not free from distress." He said that in Australia people were told to produce, and they had produced so much that the productiveness of the* people seemed, to he greater than the purchasing power, so that in the midst of plenty there was abject poverty. There were thousands of pairs of shoes and similar commo4 ciies in the stones, the people needed them but were going without. He admitted that the effort to secure personal profit and personal power had caused a tremendous advance in civilisation in the last 50 or 100 years, but whether_toO great a price had been paid for that advance was a matter to he determined. It was said by some -that the fetish of private property, particularly the handing-down of huge assets from father to son, was not in the hest interests of the community. Even conservative governments were impressed and there were steeply-graded inheritances taxes. While advocates of the Douglas Credit System found adherents, and an equal number was bitterly opposed to the A plus B thereom, the Douglas Credit group, possibly because of the fanatical zeal common to the newlyconverted, was making progress. Another section contended that there must he communal control with planned production so that there might be production for use and not for profit as it was useless to the community to have ample supplies if the people could not enjoy the uses and conveniences of the things produced. Because of the increased unemploy-t ment a tremendous impetus had been given to debating societies, as many of the employed were fearful that they would become unemployed. There was much honest and original thought in evid ?nce at these debates, Mr. Fitzpatrick is president and speaker of the first Masonic debating society of New South Wales, and chairman of the manageznent committee of the Mosman Parliamentary Debating Society, which at a full dehate gathers an audience of 500 people prepared to pay a shilling each for the entertainment. Debates were broadcast, he said, and people who never bothered before about sociology or economics were now eager and questioning students.