AN APPRECIABLE WAIT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3459, 27 February 1912, Page 5

AN APPRECIABLE WAIT.

THEN MR. LAURENSON TAKES UP THE RUNNING. OPPOSITION AND POLITICAL HYPOCRISY. The Opposition gave no indication of any desire to reply to the Minister for Agriculture, and. after an appreciable pause Mr G. Laurenson rose with an apology for continuing the Debate. He said that as Sir Joseph Ward had announced that he would vacate his position the motion of No-confidence was really directed not against him, but against the Liberal and Progressive Parties. There was no open and clean-cut charge against Sir .L-vph Ward, but only hints and head*::::• which were a disgrace to those from whom they emanated, and tended to drive good but thin-skinned men out of public life. It was charged against the Government that it borrowed excessively yet the Opposition voted for the loans. It was political hypocrisy to declare against the increase of expenditure by two millions and to suppress the facts that much of it was due to the activities of the lending departments and old age pensions, education, the post office etc. ’

Sir J. Ward: Hear,- hear. When the Liberal Party went-on the platform which it had sadly neglected (Ministerial “hear, hears”) they would place the facts before the people. Mr Massey had said that they were taking two millions .more a year from the people now than they were in 1906, but vei'y much of that came from Customs duties on luxuries—wjhich evidenced the great prosperity of the country—from the Railways' and the Post and Telegraph Departments. In spite of concession after concession in the Post and Telegraph -Department, revenue from that department had increased by half a million in five years. Similar results were shown in- the Railway Department. The only faxes increased were the land and) income taxes. Mr Laurenson declared that the oountry was being depopulated by the large landowners, whom he described as the mainstay of the Opposition.