LABOR'S POLICY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 119, 7 October 1912, Page 7

LABOR'S POLICY.

OUTLINED BY MR. REARDON. ■Speaking at the United Labor meeting at New Plymouth on Friday, Mr. M, .1. lleardon, of Wellington, outlined the policy of the Labor ljarty. The policy contained a proposal- for an improvement in the education of the children of the workers. . If children showed ability they should have the same .benefits of the best education that the State provided as those of the wealthiest in. the land. They should be given the same opportunity, not only in primary education, but in secondary education and in the technical schools and colleges and universities of the Dominion. It should be compulsory for children to be kept at school until they were fifteen years of age, and, even then, their edu- > cation should not be abandoned. Dur-, I ing his apprenticeship a boy should devote two-thirds of his time to his employer, and the other third should be devoted to technical education, his bent having been discovered. Should the employer neglect this duty the State should step in. The next plank was political reform. Few, however, realised the enormous importance—the almost sacred duty—of the man in exercising i his privilege on election day. At the most a man could only exercise this privilege twelve or fifteen times. By proportional representation, too, they could avoid the pitfalls that come by reason of parochialism. The larger the constituencies, too, the harder for minorities to get the control. By giving the people power to initiate legislation outside Parliament, lie continued, people would have greater opportunities of putting an effective mark on the Statutes.

He touched on another plank, viz., the referendum. .As Democrats they submitted that there could exist no doubt in the minds of all that all great matters should be decided in this way by the people. Another plank was known as the "recall." If a legisator were doing something which the majority of his constituents disagreed with, they should ; have the right to say, "You come back and prove at the ballot-box whether you still maintain the confidence of the majority of your constituents." Then, again, there was the country quota. Would any man say that the country electors were more intelligent than those of the cities? Yet 8000 or 10,000 electors in the country could send a man to Parliament, whilst the town constituencies required at least 12,000 votes. It was not right that the country should have greater voting power in this way than the towns. He then referred to State enterprise. The State controlled the railways, Post and Telegraph and Public Trust Departments, and contained thousands of able, intellectual men who were debarred from i exercising the rights of ordinary men. They dare not express their views at election times lest they lose their positions. This was unjust. Whilst he did not believe that any civil servant should abuse any knowledge obtained in his work, every man in the service should be at liberty to come out and take his part in the politics of the coun-, try as freely as anyone else. He then dwelt shortly with the land policy. The Labor Party's platform, proposed to give the land in small areas to those who wanted to cultivate it, not to hold it in large areas. The value of land created by the farmer should go to the fanner, and that created by the, community to the community. Particu-1 larly did this apply to towns, where speculators held land which was serving no useful purpose. When the community insisted on this there would not be such inflated land values as at present, ami , more land would be in the bands of useful people. State banks formed another plank of their platform, with the sole right c f note issue, and he instanced the suir»fss of this in Australia. Tie barely touched on the industrial question. They, however, claimed the right to work. All, the land was held by a few private people, and so were the factories. The wealth was in the hands of the small. minority, so that the majority must either work or die. When the individual got out of work it was the duty of the community to find him work, not to see him starve. 1

That was the principle of the Right to Work Bill. Then there was the Minimum Wage Bill. At present each class of worker had to go before the Arbitration Court to have its minimum wage fixed. Would it, he asked, not be much simpler and entail far less thouble to have a minimum wage fixed by Parliament for the whole Dominion, as was done for the Railway Department? Then, too, there were the Saturday half-holiday and the forty-four hour week. A social improvement, too, would be the Endowment for Motherhood Bill. It had never met with much sympathy in "New Zealand, but Australia had put it on the Statute Book. It had been sneered at and jeered at by those people opposed to the Labor Party, but it would prove of enormous benefit in the household of the working man who was subsisting on a struggling wage. In conclusion, he urged them not only to be careful of their votes at the general elections, but also at the local body elections to be careful to exercise their privilege, and to take an intelligent interest in elections. There was room, particularly in hospital and charitable aid boards, for improvement. He wound up a forceful address by appealing to them to he enthusiastic, as it was enthusiasm that counted.