EX-SERVICEMEN FARMERS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 11, Issue 32, 23 May 1947, Page 6

EX-SERVICEMEN FARMERS

SOME GO TO UNITED STATES Until there was some sympathy for professionally-trained people and opportunities for them in this country, they would continue to leave New Zealand and not return, said Dr. Dean E. McHenry, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, in an address to members of the Wellington English-speaking Union. Dr. McHenry mentioned eight outstanding New Zealanders who had taken professional posts in the United States in the past 12 months. Such an export of brains was a very serious problem, and he felt that it was the result of poor salaries paid to people holding top positions in the public service. It was also caused by a general lack of appreciation of the conditions required for research.

New Zealand’s three main problems, he said, concerned people, trade, and planning. Advocating a policy of planned immigration, he said that unless an immediate policy was adopted there was a danger that some international agency would bring pressure to bear to fill the large countries of only a small population with people from overcrowded countries. «* ,

As a trained observer, he said that New Zealand seemed to need some planning agency which could advise the people of the long-term effect of economic and social measures.

Owing to a lack of sufficiently strong support for the university in this country there were no facilities for combined teaching and research. Trained research workers would be able to give the people a sense of direction which was at present lacking.

“You are pioneers in social welfare,” he added, “but in my travels throughout the country I have found no trained social workers and no training school for them.”