REHABILITATION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 56, 3 September 1943, Page 3

REHABILITATION

ADDRESS BY MAJOR SKINNER P.A. ASHBURTON, This Day. Major Skinner, Minister of Rehabilitation, addressed a meeting last evening, outlining the Government's plans for post-war reconstruction in the Dominion. Already of 214 applications 100 soldiers had been assisted on to freehold property, he said; 33 had received 100 per cent, of loan money to buy new homes, 269 had received similar assistance to buy existing houses, and 14 leasehold farms had been balloted for and men placed on them in the last few days. Major Skinner said the Government would not place a man in an uneconomical proposition. Of 114 applications declined 49 had been refused because the farms were not suitable or the men not fit to work the types of farm they sought. Others were rejected owing to lack of knowledge of farming,, and some of these had been put into the farm training scheme. Seventy-four returned men had been helped into businesses, and 74 more assisted to take university courses. Of the 24,000 men returned to New Zealand, 13,000 had gone back to their old jobs without rehabilitation assistance, 1300 had gone back to their own businesses, and 312 were still undecided about ..their future.

The Government was going to appoint rehabilitation officers overseas to travel on the hospital ships and contact the men daily so that preparations could be made to help them when they arrived, said Major Skinner. He denied that the Servicemen's Settlement and Land Sales Bill was an attempt to socialise the land. The only one who could object to the Bill was the speculator.

A vote of thanks and confidence in the Labour Party was carried.