POLICY & OUTLOOK

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 July 1943, Page 3

POLICY & OUTLOOK

OF THE NATIONAL PARTY STATED BY PRESIDENT. EMPHASIS ON ECONOMIC SECURITY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Addressing the conference of the National Party, in Wellington yesterday, the president (Mr A. Gordon) said that in the coming election the Labour Party no doubt would lurk back to the depression era. “Labour,” he went on io observe, “is flogging a dead issue. There is no argument today concerning the right to security. We live in a different age. Our outlook, our philosophy, is different. Today il is universally acknowledged by all parties in all the democracies that the first responsibility of the State in the social order, in contrast with the harsh realities of past years, is to ensure that its citizens have a secure future, secure employment, and freedom from the anxieties and hardships caused by circumstances over which they have no control.

ONLY METHODS IN DISPUTE. “Where we take issue with the Labour Party is in the methods used in pursuance of that end. We contend that the State is not entitled to destroy the liberty of its subjects—to give us as the price of social security an evergrowing bureaucratic control of the life of the nation. We are fighting a war for freedom, against the forces of totalitarianism; but totalitarianism can come in this country when the State, instead of ensuring that the family, the local authority and industries have the economic means, the social opportunity and the legal power to care for their own members, 'substitutes itself for these and attempts to fulfil their functions. While .everyone willingly submits to restrictions and controls made necessary by the exigencies of war, there can be no justification for using the circumstances of war to impose restrictions on the freedom of the person, which violates the democratic ideal of social organisation and substitutes a system differing only in degree from that which the United Nations are pledged to destroy. The democratic ideal demands that in every sphere in which the individual lives, his life, his family, his local community, and his industry should be allowed to govern themselves. SHORT & LONG VIEWS.

“An election policy is intended, in the main, to cover measures that are capable of initiation in the three-yeai parliamentary term. Sir William Beveridge, in his report, refers to the five giants that have to be tackled, and describes them as Unemployment, Want Sickness, Squalor and Ignorance. Three years may serve to attack them, but it will be a protracted war before they are slain, and the armchair strategists will be ready with- advice as to how, and why, and when, but in war sane people arc content to leave the of attack in the hands of men trained in the art of war; so with policy. Some will think we are too radical, some that we arc too conservative —that we move too fast, or too slow. The task of om leaders is that, while keeping eye and mind on the long-range objective, they carry out that part which is within the bounds of practical politics. POINTS OR CONSIDERATION.

“Looking beyond the immediate present and also the policy for the general election, I believe that democracy should be extended to encompass the whole social organism, and I suggest the following points as matters for future consideration: — “(1) The decentralisation of authority. “(2) By the merging of the functions of local regional bodies, and the assumption by them in an increasing degree of some of the functions at present centralised in the State. “(3) By a reorganisation of industry to provide for councils as the instrument for the control and regulation of industry, councils on which employer, employee and consumer will be represented.

(4) By an extension of economic

means whereby workers, management and capital will share to an increasing l y more equitable degree in the profits of industry. “(5) By an even extended application of our policy of family allowances, through a scientific fixing of the basic wage at the full amount needed by an adult single man or woman, paid irrespective of sex, with increases to the full amount necessary to provide for dependants when that responsibility is assumed. By these means, together with a wise policy of immigration- we may hope to build the population the Dominion so sorely needs. “(6) By the greatest possible expansion of independent family farms, opeiating as a rural community in seasonal, social and cultural activities, and by the extension of small industrial and distributive units, in so far as that may oe consistent with efficiency in production and distribution. “(7) By the curbing, through legislative enactment, of monopolies and of the powers associated with huge financial resources when these prove inimical to the best interests, of the State and its citizens. “These are suggestions only, but they

may serve to indicate lines along which democracy may develop, for the horizons of democracy are ever receding,” Mr Gordon said in conclusion. “They are made in pursuance of the belief that a political party which may one day become the Government is not only concerned with winning elections, but as trustees for the people in finding ever-widening avenues of service. Our ideal should be a nation traditionalist, not afraid to carry into the new age the creative traditions of the past, a nation revolutionary in that, where experience has shown there is dead wood to be cut out, it allows no tradition to hamper it; a democracy which, when it says ’progress,’ will mean, not mere comfort, but better citizens.” In another section of his address, Mr Gordon declared himself of opinion that the party system was essential to democracy, though it was the policy of the National Party that in time of emergency parties should come together. Stability was least likely to be achieved. he said, by a group of Independents in Parliament. __