The Unemployment Board.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20094, 25 November 1930, Page 10

The Unemployment Board.

The Minister for Agriculture, whose views on the Unemployment Act appear in an Auckland message to The Press to-day, believes that the public has " not yet reached the stage "where it understands what ia meant "by the 30s unemployment tax." Either he is wrong in thinking the public so dull, or he is waiting for another occasion to reveal the secret virtues of the Act; for he says nothing but what everybody has heard before and understood perfectly well, whether condemning or approving it. It i 3 not an illuminating calculation, though it may be Mr Murdoch's own, that thirty shillings, after all, are "only three "' ten bobs' that one might spend at " the races." But if it comforts the Minister to think that there will be " no ' kick' coming" when people grasp fact, or that the tax will seem " a mere bagatelle" when they realise that the Unemployment Act is intended to help the workless and to provide work, he has as good a right to that comfort as to any other that he can get. It is not a very real cornfort, however, because objection to the Act is much more intelligent than he thinks and is directed not eo much against the amount of the individual tax as against the weakness of the Act as a whole. It raises a large sum by direct taxation; it provides for a iarg<> subsidy from the Consolidated Fund; it opens up large possibilities of foolish, unproductive expenditure; and it is no substitute at all for the measures against unemployment that ought to have been taken and were

shirked. However, the Board meets I to-day to start making the best of its job. It will probably understand —it is at any rate to be hoped that it will understand—that the public will watch its doings with wide-awake attention, even if the Minister has another opinion j and at the outset the public will take a close interest in the appointment of the " one or more cxecu- " tive officers" who are expected to serve the Board instead of an " elaborate organisation." If the Board must have permanent officers, and probably it must, they should be as few as possible, because the Government is pledged to keep down the administrative drain on the I und, but theirs should also be regarded as special appointments, to be filled only by men with special qualifications. For example, the Board could use an agricultural economist to great advantage; and if it is going to advance very far in some of its vaguely defined duties, an expert costing accountant will be indispensable. To keep its own costs down, however, it will have to be more careful than the Government, which has just distributed its absurd little '.ax receipt books by the hundredthousand. The only sign of providence in them is the anticipation of receiving seven-rind-sixpences up to September, 3932, and that is a depressing one.