LABOUR DENIAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 June 1938, Page 11

LABOUR DENIAL

NO CONFISCATION OF LAND DUTIES OF INDIVIDUAL RECOGNISED MR LANGSTONE AT HASTINGS HASTINGS, June 20. Six hundred people were present ii the Assembly Hall, at Hastings, to night, when the Minister of Lands, th Hon F. Langstone, gave a political ad dress. The Minister received an excel lent hearing throughout, and at th conclusion a vote of confidence in th Government, and in Mr E. L. Culler as member for Hawke’s Bay, was car ried with acclamation, and to the ac companiment of cheering. Mr Cullen, as chairman, said M Langstone had been one of the ables Ministers of Lands New Zealand ha ever- had. His work as Acting-Minis ter of Native Affairs during the ab sence of Mr Savage in England, ha also been outstanding. Mr Langstone said that the Nations Party’s accusation that Labour was go ing to confiscate land was absurd. La bour had no such intention, and sug gestions to the contrary were simpl; bunkum. Labour stood for the right of the individual, and understood bet ter than their opponents their dutie to the individual as well as to tin people as a whole. Contrasting conditions in New Zea land under Labour with those obtain' ing under the previous Government Mr Langstone described the unit ol the nation as the family, not the individual. Who would deny that the average family in New Zealand today was.-infinitely better off than it had been for very many years? GUARANTEED PRICES Discussing the guaranteed price for butter and cheese, Mr Langstone criticised the recent speech by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hamilton, who advocated the compensated price. Mr I Langstone said he doubted if anybody, even..Mr s .Hamilton himself, was able to explain what the compensated price .really was. The Minister claimed that the Government’s guaranteed price system had very many virtues, the chief of which was that the farmer knew for a year ahead what his income was. The guaranteed price was simplicity itself, and it had the effect of stabilising the value of dairy land as well as of dairy cattle. The scheme had ended “Tooley Street manipulation.” The result was that the New Zealand marketing system was the envy of the whole world. It had been said that the dairy-farmer under the guaranteed price scheme had lost control of Jiis produce, but Mr Langstone said, the farmer never had controlled his produce any more than the sheepfarmer had control of his sheep. Stock and station agents, with their so much per cent for this, so much per cent for that, and so much per cent for something else, saw to that. Mr Laffgstone claimed that if the price of wool fell to, say, 6d a pound, sheep-farmers would come along to the Government and ask for a guaranteed price also. “NONSENSE AND BUNK” ‘Any nonsense and bunk is put into the newspapers,” said Mr Langstone in the course of an attack on the New Zealand Press. “The result is that New Zealand has a badly-informed Press and therefore a badly-informed public.” Mr Langstone made a long criticism of the land policy of the previous Government, particularly the purchase of large estates, many of which, he claimed, were purchased at far too" high a price. These had since been drastically written down, but the loss had to be borne not by the Government but by the whole people, the majority ol whom possessed no land whatever. As long as he was Minister of Lands such a policy would not be repeated. He claimed that the development ol hitherto waste lands at Tarawera and other places was proving a success and giving work to men hitherto unemployed. 'He recognised the importance of scientific farming and was doing everything he could to encourage it. The Government’s duty was to create a better foundation on which to build, said Mr Langstone, referring broadly to the Government’s social legislation, which he described as a plan to attain national security. The Government believed it was better for old people at 60 to be idle than for young men and women. When he heard wealthy people, such as a director of big business concerns, complaining about taxation and saying the State was a hungry partner, it made him smile. The fact was that the Government was merely taxing the taxers.