FINANCIAL SITUATION

Southland Times, Issue 18859, 26 June 1920, Page 5

FINANCIAL SITUATION

DEMANDS FOR EXPENDITURE. (Special to the Times.) WELLINGTON, June 25. The warning in the Governor-General’s speech about the somewhat embarrassing financial situation had apparently not had lime to have its effect when the House met immediately afterwards, for among the questions addressed to Ministers were many demanding the expenditure of very large sums of money. The Labour members asked for immediate increases in the rates of pensions lo aged people, to widows, to retired civil servants and to sufferers from miners’ phthisis. Mr Hanan asked whether the Government intended to introduce a scheme of insurance against unemployment and sickness and Mr Holland asked for full pensions for tubercular returned soldiers declared to be incurable. Mr Fraser dealt with his special topic of housing. He pointed to the large number of houses needed to satisfy the needs of the people, and showed that the efforts made by the Government were so wholly- inadequate to meet the situation that at the present rate of construction it would be a hundred years before the shortage was made up, assuming that in the meantime the growth of the community was met adequately by private building. He asked the Government to produce a scheme which would make good the shortage during the lifetime of the present Parliament.