MR. PARRY HITS OUT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 76, 21 June 1927, Page 14

MR. PARRY HITS OUT

LABOUR’S VIEWPOINT PRE-SESSIONAL ADDRESS \TATIONAL questions which the Labour Party will keep before Parliament during the coming session were explained to his constituents by Mr. W. E. Parry, M.P., at a meeting held in St. Thomas’s Church Hall, Ponsonby, last evening. Dealing with the timber industry, Mr. Parry said the Government was pursuing a policy of drift, while the industry was stricken and needed a thorough scientific investigation from the forest to the builder. About 10,000 people were affected, vet the Government did nothing, while mills were closing down, including the Government’s own mills. The industry was being beaten by overseas competition, just as other New Zealand industries were DAIRY CONTROL The farming industry was being strangled by the inactivity of the Government, Mr. Parry said. He dealt with the way the Dairy Produce Control Board had been “torpedoed,” “The whole business seems to me like a bit of treachery to the farmers,” said the speaker. By an Order-in-Council part of the jury system had been abolished. Such legislation could never have been passed through Parliament. It was an encroachment on the rights of the poorer sections of the people, and a most treacherous thing for a Government to do. ATTACK ON WAGES The immigration policy was a definite attempt to reduce wages to the 9s a day standard. The Labour Party had combated the attempt to legislate a discrimination in wages to give single men less than married men. The increase in interest rates, the rural finance commission, and gradual awakening of the farming community, was dealt with. The wretched housing conditions in Auckland Central were not improved by remissness of the City Council. The roads and footpaths were a public disgrace. Was it due to the fact that it was a working-class centre? Conditions were better in Remuera and Epsom. Why? Yet in the council elections only three Labour men got in.