POLITICS IN WAR TIME

Wairarapa Times-Age, 13 May 1941, Page 4

POLITICS IN WAR TIME

BREACH OF AGREEMENT ALLEGED BY OPPOSITION LEADER. STATEMENTS BY MINISTERS CRITICISED. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) INVERCARGILL, May 12. A telegram protesting against what he calls a flagrant breach of the agreement between the Government and Opposition parties was sent today to the Minister of Finance, Mr Nash,-by the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland, who is at present in Invercargill. The agreement was “to minimise public platform political propaganda,” and Mr Holland contends that recent statements by the Ministers of Health and Industries and Commerce have broken the terms of this agreement. The full text of Mr Holland's telegram is as follows: —"With a desire to promote national unity, I made an agreement with the Prime Minister tc minimise public platform political propaganda for a certain period, and 1 have strictly observed that arrangement, declining to permit any publicity for my speechs at party meetings. Last week newspapers gave full publicity to a violent attack on the medical profession by the Minister of Health, and later the Minister of Industries and Commerce issued a purely propaganda statement about industrial licensing. I regard these published statements as a flagrant breach of the arrangement agreed to by the Prime. Minister, and unless I receive an assurance that such breaches of the arrangement will not be repeated, I shall understand that the Government does not intend to honour the arrangement and shall act accordingly. The public is heartily sick of this constant persecution of doctors, specially when so many of them are sacrificing so much to tend our sick and wounded countrymen on foreign battlefields, and morel especially seeing that doctors have complied with every requirement, of law. Please let me have a prompt reply whether similar publicity to Ministerial propaganda is to be permitted in future.”