HE KNOWS THE ANSWERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 5, Issue 115, 5 September 1941, Page 14

HE KNOWS THE ANSWERS

New Zealand’s Prime Minister

LAN MITCHELL recently broadcast from the BBC an interesting account of the life and character of the Prime Minister of New Zealand, the Right Hon. Peter Fraser, who had just arrived in Britain. "When I met Mr. Fraser the last time he was in London I remember thinking to myself: ‘How easy he is to get along with. There was no formality about him, no attempt build up an air of a great presence or anything like that. Another thing I noticed quickly about him was his sense of humour. "TI think it must be the Scot in him that gives him this ever-present sense of fun. He was born in Hill of Fearn, a village in the Scottish Highlands, His father was the local shoemaker who had come back home to settle down after a spell at being in the .North-West Mounted Police in Canada. It was in this shoemaker’s shop that young Peter Fraser picked up his first knowledge of politics. You see, his father was the local Liberal agent. And as he mended the village shoes he used to hold forth on what the Liberals though was the best way of running a country. The vil- lagers called the shop the local ‘ House of Commons,’ and they used to spend long hours there listening. Young Peter used to listen too, and he learnt quite a bit. "When Peter Fraser went to New Zealand as a young man of 26, he worked for a time as a labourer, He

was very interested in local affairswhich in New Zealand are quite a nursery for Members of Parliament-and he was elected to the Wellington Harbour Board and also to the City Council. He gave Wellington one of the best municipal milk distributions that you will find anywhere in the world: His wife worked with him, too, and she became a member of the hospital board. He entered Parliament in 1913 and soon became one of the outstanding members df the New Zealand Labour Party; and in 1935, when that party was returned to govern the country for the first time, he became a Minister and not only a Minister but deputy to Mr, Savage, the Prime Minister. "Tf anyone tries to take him in with a name or a title or a position, they are riding for a fall, because he will not pay any attention to any of them. And he can be pretty biting if he wants to, There was an occasion once when he quietened a political opponent very effectively. This man was scorning Mr. Fraser’s views and opinions on farming. He backed up his own arguments with: ‘For myself I can at least claim that I was born on the land’; Mr. Fraser chipped in with: ‘A sheep could claim that much.’ Another time someone wrote to one of the papers expressing annoyance with certain of Mr. Fraser’s views. He wrote that as a Socialist of thirty years’ standing he dissociated himself from Mr. Fraser’s attitude, He got his answer. Mr. Fraser said that thirty years was a bit too long to be standing and suggested that he moved on a bit and caught up with the times!"