STALE POLITICIANS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 453, 13 May 1890, Page 2

STALE POLITICIANS.

In an article warmly advocating the establishment of the fishing industry on a large scale in New Zealand, the Wellington Press at the same time makes a vigorous attack on “ stale politicians.” “Thesteamers Tekapo and Jubilee,” says our contemporary, “go crowded to Australia, carrying away the ablest bodied and the pluckiest of our men. Weary of tbe miserable atmosphere of lifeless inaction which hangs like a funeral pall over the land, they go to New South Wales, where trade is free, where labor is well rewarded, and where everyone is full of the courage of self-confidence, and every step is elastic with the assurance of unfettered enterprise, and the hopes of a rich reward for labor. This land is curst with the incompetence of its governing classes. They have no conception of Government, but the miserable alternatives of reckless gambling or a grinding parsimony. One party debauch the country by reckless borrowing and more reckless expenditure of the money ; and the other, when the patient is sick, instead of restoring him by wholesome diet and a generous treatment, bleed and starve and sweat him till he is the pale ghost of the man he was. This is the treatment the present Government have applied to New Zealand. The result is that our people crowd the steamers to leave a land where hope is crushed out of them to seek a land where freedom has not yet been killed by a cruel and senseless taxation. We must have an end end put to all this. We must have heart and life and hope restored to our people, we must have the courage come back to our men, and enterprise and the spirit of venture to our traders. A Government that says it can do nothing to break down the barriers and let the wealth of England and Australia flow in. is doomed ; a Government that thinks it can face Parliament in triumph because it has scraped together a contemptible surplus of £120,000 by skinning us alive and driving people and capital from the colony is condemned. All around us lie the elements of wealth, and the Government have so killed out the spirit of enterprise that we cannot get men to make a venture even of £2OOO or £3OOO to gather it. England gathers £10,000,000 a year from the harvest of the seas ; the United States scoop up more than £8,000,000; Russia gains £5,000,000 ; Canada boasts of a profit of £4,000,000, and so the lists go on ; and here are we in New Zealand with markets inAustralia and markets in India open to us, and we are so utterly down-hearted that we have not the courage to dip a net into the sea. And not only so, but with fish in abundance at our doors we have to pay Is oras for a fish breakfast, which ought to be ours at one-third the price, and which ought to be within the reach of every working man. Let the fishery be placed on a proper basis, and the demand will be so stimulated by a cheap and regular supply that the industry will expand beyond all conception. We have fish on our shores which cannot be approached in quality by the fish of the New South Wales Coast. We are going to leave it to Tasmania to grasp the trade and take possession of the markets? Our Government h?.ve blistered our backs, bastinadoed our feet, and plastered our bodies with taxation till we are sore in every part of us; they offer bonuses and plunder our pockets to give the money to any man who will make or manufacture, as they call it, a bit of bad paper or gallon of sham cod liver oil out of sharks’ inwards. But they will do ■ nothing towards pioneering the way to develop one of the best of our natural resources. The fact is the Government is a taxing Government and has not the slightest insight or the faintest comprehension of the possibility of clearing the way for prosperity to flow into the colony. It is a Government of one idea, and that idea was to tax, and tax, and tax, and screw, and screw, and screw, with the conviction that by persistent taxing and screwing it would somehow tax out and screw out a surplus. It has dene it. It has achieved its purpose. And it has crushed the spirit out of the people. That is the verdict of Australians, of men who came here believing in the strength of our resources, and amazed at the utter despondency of the people. We want new men. We want statesmen who are endued with foresight and life and courage and hope. We want to sweep the boards, to clear the ministerial benches and to weed out the House, and we cadi upon tbe people to help us and to put a stop to this . mournful exodus of our men and this i spiritless conduct of publie affairs. 11