in Dunedin presiding at the inauguration of a Liberal Association, and informing the country generally what the Government had done and what it intended to do.[1]
At Christchurch, he was told plainly by the leaders of the unemployed that they expected him to do a great deal more for them than had been done by Sir Harry Atkinson.
He replied by rebuking their spokesman for a slighting reference to Sir Harry, and informed them that they would be disappointed if they thought that the new Government would carry on non-reproductive works simply for the sake of finding employment for men out of work.
One of them complained of having to walk fifty miles to get work, and the Minister for Mines then related how he had walked one hundred miles in Victoria, without money to carry him on his way. He told them that they went out into the country and made a few pounds at harvest time, and then expected the Government to find work for them for the rest of the year. The Government would not encourage those ideas, which were bad for the men and the country. He reminded them that in the past they had been paupers at 4s. a day. The Government would remove all that, he said, but they would have to undertake reproductive works at prices which would pay fair wages.
- ↑ The platform of this association, which first took the name of the National Liberal Association, and had a short life, was:—(1) Residential qualification only for electors; (2) the female franchise; (3) State aid for co-operative industrial settlements; (4) the establishment of a Government Labour Bureau; (5) the appointment of a Minister for Labour; (6) extension of the municipal functions and an increase generally of local government; (7) absolute stoppage of the sale of Crown Lands; (8) the introduction of a progressive land and income tax, and the abolition of the property tax; (9) land succession dues to be paid in land; (10) land companies to be taxed periodically to an amount equal to the average proceeds of successive dues; (11) sole tenure of lands to be a lease from the State; (13) nationalisation of the mines; (14) nationalisation of the railways; (15) nationalisation of the postal marine services; (16) a legal periodical adjustment of rents; (17) statutory limitation of the maximum amount recoverable as interest; (18) a State Bank of issue; (19) the State to supply educational requisites at cost price; (20) equal facilities to be given for acquiring primary and secondary education; (21) the appointment of an elective Revising Committee with limited powers, instead of the Legislative Council; (22) an elective Governor; (23) simplification of the machinery of government; (24) simplification of judicial procedure.
