Labour’s Greatest Prime Minister Disappointed

Labour’s greatest Prime Minister, Michael Joseph Savage, would be weeping tears of disappointment at his party’s feeble attempts to reform the Reserve Bank and tackle the Auckland housing crisis according to Democrats for Social Credit Deputy Leader & Finance Spokesman Chris Leitch.

Savage, who became Labour’s first Prime Minister, campaigned on a platform of Monetary Reform, and following victory in the 1935 general election, set about using the Reserve Bank to create the credit necessary to rebuild the nation.

With backing from a strong Social Credit movement, Savage appointed John A Lee as housing under-secretary and he got stuck in to the task of building state houses.

5,000 houses were built by 1939, and 30,000 by 1949, financed by Reserve Bank credit.

As the 1949 Ministry of Works report “State Housing in New Zealand” records:-

“To finance its comprehensive proposals, the Government adopted the somewhat unusual course of using Reserve Bank credit……The sums advanced by the Reserve Bank were not subscribed or underwritten by other financial institutions. This action showed the Government’s intention to demonstrate that it was possible for the State to use the country’s credit in creating new assets for the country”.

According to John Hotson, Professor of Economics at the University of Waterloo, in Toronto, Canada, Savage’s use of the Reserve Bank saw New Zealand become the first country in the developed world to recover from the Great Depression of the 1930’s.

Reserve Bank credit was also advanced to the Dairy Board to build New Zealand’s fledgling dairy industry and back other producer boards, and the International Monetary Fund’s 2012 report “The Chicago Plan Revisited” recommended governments adopt its use for infrastructure development.

Today’s Labour Party needs to man up and look to the successes of the past if it wants to be taken seriously as a government of the future.

ENDS

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