STATE & THE CITIZEN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 July 1942, Page 2

STATE & THE CITIZEN

PLANNING AND DIRECTION NECESSARY ON WIDER SCALE. VIEWS OF NATIONAL PARTY PRESIDENT. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The opinion that planning and direction was necessary on a far wider scale than hitherto to meet the basic needs of the State and its citizens was expressed by the president of the New Zealand National Party, Mr Alex. Gordon, in his address at the opening of the Dominion conference of the party in Wellington yesterday. He said the question whether the extreme measures of Government control brought in for war purposes would be relinquished in peacetime was one of the most important in the political sphere in the immediate future. GOVERNMENT CONTROL. “Today in all the democracies that remain free,” said Mr Gordon, “we have given the Government control and powers for organising our capital and labour for the purposes of war, and the question now being asked is, if such things are necessary in war, may they not be desirable in peace. One hesitates to make any statement that might be misconstrued, but it appears to me that what does emerge is that there can be no going back, there can be no return to a purely private-in-dividualistic regime. Much had been said of the virtues of individual and private enterprise, and there had also been a spate of literature putting forward the benefits that would accrue to the people from the adoption of Socialism. The National Party believed that much of the activity of the community must, and should be, managed by individuals free to follow their genius and enterprise. On the .other hand, they had to concede the necessity for planning and direction on a far wider scale than hitherto to meet the basic needs of the State and its citizens.

' “I have heard and read a good deal of both sides of the question,” said Mr Gordon, “and my reaction has been that the extreme of both sides both overstate their case. I believe that an overwhelming majority of the people are at one, and that a measure of sweet reasonableness would result in a judicious combination of individualism and socialism, which, in co-oper-ation, would be for the good of humanity as a whole.”