The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1928 PASSING THE MUSTARD

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 493, 24 October 1928, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1928 PASSING THE MUSTARD

ANOTHER new name lias been found for ibe United Party, whose aliases multiply like its borrowing policy. On this occasion the party has been designated the ‘‘Mustard Club” —a title bestowed upon it at Dunedin last evening by the Minister of Finance, with a dash of pungent humour and possibly a tang of pawky malice in the political sense. In return for sauce it was the right way to pass the mustard. Obviously, the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, who has an exceptionally clear vision in polities, looks upon the United Party and its leader as hot stuff. More than likely the shrewdest Minister in the Reform camp expects the majority of electors throughout the Dominion to take his meaning correctly and remember on polling day at the feast of political excitement that very little mustard is sufficient even for the strongest palate, while too much of it spoils the meat. Like everybody else, including some members of the United Party, Mr. Stewart was astounded at the new party’s borrowing policy. The Minister, whose own record for raising loans has been anything bnt meagre, described Sir Joseph Ward’s scheme to borrow £70,000,000 as a vast thing, so vast, indeed, as to convince the member for Dunedin West that the United’s Leader does not suffer the handicaps of old age at all, but suffers from the impetuous disabilities of youth. Thus, to Mr. Stewart, Six Joseph really was “too young, too dashing, two extravagant, too spendthrift—in short, too much of a plunger for the careful and prudent people of New Zealand.” This point of view was, of course, to be expected from an administrator whose native as well as his spiritual home is Dunedin, where Gasanovan profligacy is not encouraged. And the Minister is not alone among Otago business men in condemning the plunging policy of Sir Joseph Ward. The vast scheme of borrowing which would, if foolish people could only be made to believe it, create a new heaven and a new earth in this debt-ridden country, was too much for the United Party’s competent candidate for Chalmers, Mr. John London, a former Mayor of Dunedin, causing him to decline the honour of jumping off at the deep end in distinguished company. The canny man realised that it was better to retire early than to be thrown out later. There was ample reason for Mr. Stewart’s satirical condemnation of the United Party leader’s exuberantly youthful plan to litter the country with loans. The Minister remembered how Sir Joseph and his friends had denounced the Government’s borrowing policy. Hence the Ministerial fancy of a scriptural picture in which he saw the Leader of the United Party on a mountaintop, emulating a suave tempter, showing the electors showers of gold over town and country. Then, Mr. Stewart, going back farther into Biblical history, saw Joseph with a coat of many colours. • This imagery may be entertaining enough, but it could be used very effectively by opponents of the Government by dimply recalling the fact that in the days of famine and unemployment m Israel, it was Joseph who had corn in Egypt. Apart altogether from making fun of a political plunger's financial policy, Mr. Stewart gave by far the best defence of Reform policy and achievement. But that record would have been something to boast about had the Minister shown more courage in tackling and bringing down the grotesque pile of taxation. That is his Tower of BabeL