LABOUR CANDIDATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1938, Page 7

LABOUR CANDIDATE

ADDRESS AT KAIPARORO ON SATURDAY. INCOMES OF FARMERS. (“Times-Age” Special.) There was an attendance of twenty at a meeting held at Kaiparoro on Saturday evening, addressed by Mr J. Robertson, Labour candidate for the Masterton seat. Mr Faulkner presided. Mr Robertson said he would prefer the electors to vote on their intelligent summing up of tne situation and not on blind prejudice. Speaking of freedom, Mr Robertson said civil servants now had freedom to express their political opinions, whereas before they had not. Secondly, voters had freer access to what was actually done and said in Parliament through the microphone and were not restricted, as before, to newspaper reports. Referring to Mr Irving’s statement that the Opaki ramp had cost £14,000, Mr Robertson said the facts were that it had cost £BOOl and he thought electors were' entitled to a greater degree of accuracy than was disclosed by Mr Irving’s figures. The National Party, said Mr Robertson, had inserted a full page advertisement in a Wellington paper, in the same issue of which Mr Hamilton had stated that although the Labour Party could afford full page advertisements, the National Party could not. So far, said Mr Robertson, no full page advertisements had appeared from the Labour Party. The advertisement stated that if the National Party were returned people would be able to own their own homes because the National Party would advance up to 90 per cent of the value. This was either a commendably candid confession of cutting or else the party was ignorant of the fact that the Labour Government had been advancing 95 per cent for the past two years.. Mr Robertson said he was appointed to a Royal Commission in 1912 to inquire into the cost of living, but at that time costs were ahead of wages and incomes, whereas today, for the first time while it was true that prices had risen, incomes rose first and were still well ahead, as an analysis would show. Farmers with £3OOO or under of unimproved property had a net- income of approximately £2 per week when Labour took office. The latest returns completed showed that he had £5 per week and the figures for this year, although not complete, indicated that it would be in the vicinity of £7 per week. These figures were net, after wages and costs had been deducted.