UNEMPLOYMENT CURE

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 499, 31 October 1928, Page 11

UNEMPLOYMENT CURE

LABOUR’S CRITICISM MR. MASON QUESTIONED About 70 electors heard Mr. H. G. R. Mason, Labour candidate in Suburbs, j who spoke at Hobsonville last evening. ! Mr. Colin MacDonald presided. Mr. Mason criticised the Govern- ! ment’s apathy toward a solution of the unemployment problem, and said some of tho causes of the depression were the lack of a land policy and over-im-migration. Both of these were within the control of the Government. A questioner made the statement that Mr. Coates’s land policy was the best one of the three offered. Mr. Mason: Then it would have been beter If Mr. Coates had carried it into execution during the past three years instead of decorating fcfis election programme with it on the eve of the election. (Loud applause.) A questioner asked: Is not the cause of unemployment trouble more economic than political? Mr. Mason: The two cannot be separated into watertight compartments. The function of politics is to provide correctives for economic troubles. The Opposition’s complaint is that the Government has not tackled the trouble. “Would the candidate support legislation to obviate having to send peniless old men to gaol in order to provide shelter?” another asked. Mr. Mason: I have already raised the point in the House and have been supported by at least one Auckland magistrate, but the Minister’s answer was “no money to provide proper institutions for such cases.”

Dealing with unemployment Mr. Mason said Mr. Coates was personally quite linkeable and no doubt he had good intentions, but these qualities had nothing to do with statesmanship, in which the Prime Minister was lamentably lacking.