The Putaruru Press PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY ’Phone 28 – – – P.O. Box 44 Office – – – – Oxford Place THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

Putaruru Press, Volume VIII, Issue 354, 4 September 1930, Page 4

The Putaruru Press PUBLISHED EVERY THURSDAY ’Phone 28 - - - P.O. Box 44 Office - - - - Oxford Place THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT BILL.

THE discussion on the Unemployment Bill has revealed a lack of imagination on the part of the sponsors of the Bill, and has been tinged, at times, with a suspicion that party advantage is a first consideration with many members. Despite the asservations of Ministers, the very core of the Bill remains obnoxious in that there is no safeguard to the nation against thousands of workers, at the dictates of a vote-seeking party —and what party is not?—receiving the dole over lengthy periods of idleness. In a young country like New Zealand such a contingency embodied in a Bill surely reveals that politicians are bankrupt so far as ideas are concerned, and are quite content to follow a stereotyped course, despite the warning which is plainly to be had from observations of the working of the British scheme.. If the Minister of Lands were to pujt into operation on an extensive scale the provisions of the recent Land Settlement Act, which provides ftir'a fund of £5,000,000 for settlement purposes, in an attractive manner and freed from the red tape conditions which have militated in the past against successful settlement, the bogey of unemployment would soon disappear. Like a soldier in the firing-line of an army at war, each farmer requires several men on his lines of communication, and, as the great need at the moment is for a better distribution of the population as between town and country, such an effort would quickly adjust the balance. If a few thousands of the unemployed could be permanently transplanted from our cities to the countryside the present great economic pinch would be very largely eased. If a supposedly over-settled country like Denmark can settle 12,000 new farmers on the land in five years, surely New Zealand can at least equal this number. Ten thousand new farmers settled on the waste lands alongside our railways during the next few years, would not only remove the unemployment bogey, but also quickly assist in permanently reducing the deficit on the railways. There seems, however, to be little prospect of such commonsense procedure being adopted by a Parliament which has so frequently shown its lack of appreciation of business-like methods.