MUDDLE & LOSS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 April 1939, Page 9

MUDDLE & LOSS

MR HAMILTON CONDEMNS LABOUR POLICY “INSULATION BLOWN UP.’’ PROFESSION AND PRACTICE CONTRASTED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, April 26. “The latest trade-slashing restrictions announced by the Minister of Finance come like another bolt from the blue. They force home to all the people a full realisation of the serious situation into which New Zealand has been allowed to drift, even after years of record prices—the situation which has made this latest unjustified and dictatorial decree necessary,” said the Hon A. Hamilton, Leader’ of the National Party, prior to his departure for the north today.

Mr Hamilton said the restrictions would put thousands out of employment and would cripple thousands more. They were a direct reduction in the standard of living. Overnight, they imposed direct loss, direct hardship and direct interference with a large section of the people. Ultimately the accumulation of that serious impact would shake the whole economic life, of the community to its foundations. Mr Nash was unable any longer to keep as a Slate secret the fact that his Socialist theories and the Government’s incompetent administration had brought New Zealand to desperate economic straits —so desperate, in fact, that Mr Nash had actually suggested that manufacturers overseas should supply New Zealand with more goods, but that payment for those goods should be postponed for twelve months or more. That was the act of a desperate bankrupt who told his creditors he had not enough money to pay his debts with, but if only the creditors would give him more goods and time to pay all would be well. Mr Hamilton said Mr Savage and his colleagues had made the blunder of acting on their assumption that purchasing power could be created by the Government’s tinkering with the money system. Purchasing power could be created only by production. Having left production to take care of itself, the Government had intensified tne deterioration by making unproductive and relief work more attractive than productive employment. In sum total, purchasing power was out of relationship with production. The latest restrictions constituted a backdoor meethod of cutting the wages and incomes of the people. The Government was well aware of this impending crisis long before last election, but categorically denied the threat of it and the whole course of the introduction of corrective measures since December necessarily had to be accomplished by camouflage and excuse, patently making the best possible use of cover during an inglorious retreat. As a front line Socialist policy, insulation was blown ■ up. If before the last election the huge list of restrictions recently announced had been published, the Labour Party would never have scored the victory it had registered. As usual, there was a vast difference between what the Government preached and what it practised. It preached the gospel of spending a way to prosperity, and practised spending a way out of it and into the biggest muddle this country had ever been in. It was tragic to think that this state of affairs had occurred in New Zealand immediately following two years of the highest income from production ever recorded in the history of the Dominion. A great deal of talk of 'restricting imports so as to help manufacturing industries was utter humbug, because many of the goods prohibited or restricted were not suitable for production in New Zealand. Mr Nash might as well admit straight out that the reason for denying the people—the wage-earners, traders and indeed all the people—their fundamental right to buy goods they were in need of, was due to the spendthrift policy of the Government in using up the London reserves and by chasing capital out of New Zealand.