Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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claimed that the UK’s financial system made the economy completely dependent on
continual new investment and growth. 18
Advertisements put out by the Labour Party during the election campaign urged
voters to follow the lead of Canada, where the then Prime Minister W. L. MacKenzie King
had said:
Canada is faced with a great battle between money power and the power of the people. Once a nation
parts with the control of its currency and credit, it matters not who makes the Nation’s laws. Usury
once in control will wreck any nation … Until the control of currency and credit is restored to the
Government and reorganised as its most conspicuous and sacred responsibility, all talk of
sovereignty of the people is idle and futile. 19
Perusal of advertisements in The Dominion and The Press in the three weeks leading up to
the 27 November election in 1935 shows that the National Party and the Associated Banks
of New Zealand were warning the public of the dire consequences of government taking
over the Reserve Bank. They said people’s savings, security and life insurance policies
would be affected, 20 and warned of bank closures and rampant inflation, as had happened
in Germany in the 1920s. 21 The then Prime Minister, George Forbes of the United Party,
warned that ‘manipulation of the currency and credit of New Zealand would lead to grave
financial disorder’. 22
One of the first actions of the government was to nationalise the Reserve Bank and
use Reserve Bank credit at 1.25 per cent for state housing and public works. This, plus
other reforms and factors, initiated a remarkable economic recovery. According to the
Labour Party’s A–Z of policy website:
For the first time, access to health care became affordable for all. The state provided low­cost housing
to those in need. A wide­ranging social welfare system gave security to older people, the sick, and