OPPOSITION CASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 July 1939, Page 7

OPPOSITION CASE

FINANCIAL AND OTHER COUNTS NEGLECT OF FORESIGHT AND ITS RESULTS. RISING COST OF LIVING. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The case for the Opposition against the Government was sei ont in detail by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Hamilton, in moving a no-confid-ence amendment to the Ad-dress-in-Reply motion in the House of Representatives last night. There were eight separate counts in Mr Hamilton’s amendment. It was claimed that the Government had forfeited the confidence of the country on the following grounds: — (1) That the Government has failed to give adequate attention to the primary questions of providing the manpower and training and the equipment necessary for national defence. Though the Government is spending considerable sums of money in certain defence measures, and though offered the fullest co-operation by the Opposition in dealing with defence problems, it is not taking adequate steps to assist in facing the precarious period through which the Empire is now passing. (2) That the Government has pursued such a spendthrift policy that it now finds itself, after three years of record export production, with London reserves depleted, with the Reserve Bank strength exhausted, and general reserves and credits dissipated all resulting in a shortage of money that has forced interest rates up substantially, and sent the Minister of Finance post-haste to London seeking money to carry on. (3) That the imposition of import and export exchange control, to avert financial disaster, is the direct result of the Government’s neglect of prudent foresight and its failure to conserve the Dominion’s financial resources. That the introduction of these regulations with such severity and abruptness, has damaged our good name and credit, and deprived a section of the community of its livelihood and caused acute business and trade dislocation, both in New Zealand and Great Britain, resulting in our currency being unacceptable outside our own country. (4) That, contrary, to what might have been anticipated under Labour administration, the Government has completely failed to promote peace in industry, with the result that industrial troubles and disputes today have reached record proportions. That the work of the Arbitration Court has been seriously impaired, and many awards of the Court flouted, resulting in serious trade disturbance and costly holdups. (5) That, while denying there is any unemployment problem, the Government last financial year spent the record total of £6,474,000 on the relief of unemployment, being £950.000 greater than the revenue for the year. This amounts to slightly more than £3 a week for 40,000 unemployed men for a full year. (6) That its policy of increasing the cost of living has been a betrayal of many wage and salary earners and is equivalent to a substantial cut in their real wages and salaries, thereby reducing purchasing power, particularly of those in receipt of fixed incomes, such as the Public Service. (7) That the administration of Native affairs is unsatisfactory: that the undertaking given by the Government that the Native should participate in developing his own land so that in the process of that development he himself would be given responsibility in directing and implementing that policy, has not been fulfilled: that the Government has failed to pursue steadily the Native housing policy as it promised. (8) That the Government’s policy, resulting in ever-rising internal costs in New Zealand, has had the disastrous consequence of placing the export industries —which are almost wholly farming —at a serious economic disadvantage: that, though export prices are not abnormally low, the farming community in general, and the high-coun-try sheep farmers in particular, find themselves unable to meet their farming costs out of revenue; that the Government’s policy of high costs and of making relief works of one kind and another so much more attractive than productive employment, is having the direct effect of reducing production and is forcing out of occupation, or proper production, much second and third class land. UHARGt Of- MISMANAGEMENT. Elaborating the points of his amendment, Mr Hamilton charged the Government with having mismanaged the affairs of the country so seriously that it had jeopardised the good name of New Zealand overseas. It was no defence, he said, for the Government to ask what the Opposition, would do. That was merely an attempt to creep into a funk hole, and was in fact a confession of failure. Before the 1935 election the Prime Minister had declared that there would be no further rise in taxation, and that the cost of Government would not increase. said Mr Hamilton, but the figures of expenditure showed a rise in three years from £33,500,000 to £56,500,000. which equalled 70 per cent. In addition. London funds had declined from £44.000,000 to £7.000,000, and there was an overdraft at the Reserve