DEMOCRATIC LABOUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1943, Page 3

DEMOCRATIC LABOUR

MRS J. A. LEE ADDRESSES ELECTORS POLICY OF THE GOVERNMENT CONDEMNED. MANPOWER COMMITMENTS. ' In an address to over one hundred electors in Masterton on Saturday night, Mrs J. A. Lee, organiser of the Democratic Soldier Labour Party, roundly condemned the Government’s policy under which youths of 18 years of age were placed in camp and contended that the Dominion’s manpower was overcommitted. Mrs Lee, who received an attentive hearing, delivered her address in a particularly forceful manner and was afterwards accorded a unanimous vote of thanks. Mrs Lee spoke in support of Aircraftman D. A. Thompson, candidate for the Masterton seat. Mrs Lee said that when the Government decided to place the 18-year-olds in camp no voice was raised against tile proposal by either members of the Labour Party or members of the National Party. The only man to raise his voice against it was J. A. Lee. She said the age of 18 years was the most important in the youths’ lives, because it fsas a time when they learned to take their part in citizenship, good or bad. If, said Mrs Lee, they spent three years after that age in camp they would be placed at a great disadvantage in adapting themselves to be good citizens after the war. When the Australian Division returned from the Middle East the New Zealand Division should have been returned. Referring to conscription, Mrs Lee said that the Labour Party had broken its promise to hold a referendum. With two divisions and Air Force units to maintain it would be seen, from population figures that to keep up reinforcements 19-year-olds would have to be sent overseas eventually. The Pacific was New Zealand’s business and whether the people like it or not this country had to be weaned from the old world. Mrs Lee outlined the Democratic Labour Party’s policy and said it aimed to put into' effect the original principles of the Labour Party, particularly that of monetary reform. Under the present orthodox system of finance, she said, the country was piling up enormous debts which would be a millstone around the necks of future generations. In 1935 the Labour Party went to the polls with monetary reform as part of its platform yet it had not been carried out. In 1939 Mr Nash told Mr Lee that monetary reform would come perhaps in twenty years’ time. Did Mr Nash think he was immortal? asked Mrs Lee. Mr Fraser told Mr Lee that if the Labour Party carried out all its election pledges too quickly there would be no platform left. Mrs Lee said the members of the Civil Service had not to her knowledge received back the cuts made in the depression years. People, she said, did not know that Maori girls could not get jobs as typistes in the Native Affairs Department because they were not pakehas. She advocated the institution of the secret ballot for the Maoris on the same lines as that for the pakeha and said that until Maoris,, as true New Zeaalnders, contested pakeha*seats, their opinions would not carry the same weight as those of pakehas.