B.— 6

This statement covers one of the most interesting periods in the history of the Dominion. The purpose of the Government is to bring security to all our people. To achieve this purpose the Government accept the responsibility for those who through physical or other disability are unable to care for themselves. For those able and willing to work the Government are laying foundations so that their skill and energy can be beneficially used not exclusively for themselves, but for the Dominion as a whole. These foundations are difficult to lay because acquisitive instincts affect the actions of all of us to such an extent in present circumstances. The Government believe, however, that when there is security for all who are willing to work the fear of poverty and depressions will disappear, and with it the dominant acquisitive instinct will gradually be eliminated. The removal of the fear of poverty is a first essential to progress. Our living standards can be raised to higher levels only by the production of more and better food, healthier and warmer clothing, with comfortable houses to make into homes. This means improved methods of farming, more efficient makers of clothes and builders of houses. Given the co-operation of producers, the Government will guarantee a collective security for our family life, for the mothers and the children of the nation, in which all who share in producing shall share in utilization. Furthermore, social security is a prime essential to the enjoyment of a fuller life—involving cultural as well as material things—that should be the heritage of our people. To suggest the inevitability of slumps and booms, associated as they are with affluence for a limited number during a period, and followed by unemployment, destitution, hardship, and privation for the masses, is to deny all conscious progressive purpose. The Government know that they cannot isolate the Dominion completely from all the effects of prices overseas, but they are determined to use to the fullest extent all the labour and materials in the Dominion for the provision to the maximum of our requirements, whilst taking every step to exchange our surplus commodities through trade with nations overseas. The only real limitation to production is our own labour and material resources. There is much unreasoned criticism with regard to the use of credit. Money and credit are means to an end. It cannot be too strongly emphasized that more production and better services are the essentials of security and of higher living standards and that money or credit is useful only when it serves this end. This means that the Government, to succeed, must have the full co-operation of workers in all fields —on the farm, in the factories, on our roads, and in commerce. Ours is one of the most richly-endowed countries in the world. The Government will do their best to use that endowment for the benefit of all our people.

4—B. 6.

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