The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1929 NOTORIOUS UNEMPLOYMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 645, 23 April 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND TUESDAY, APRIL 23, 1929 NOTORIOUS UNEMPLOYMENT

FORTY per cent, of the Dominion’s unemployed is registered in Auckland. That is a notoi-ious fact if registration be a reliable test of the extent of unemployment throughout the country. Administrative politicians have asserted time and again that the real position of unemployment would never be clearly revealed or adequately dealt with until idle men registered their need' of work. Now that the administrators have got the truth th’ey are unable to cope with it. Since it is known conclusively that many of the thousand applicants for relief work in Auckland every week have come here from other places, this extraordinarily high percentage of enforced idleness may be complimentary to the city’s pleasant attractions, hut it is the sort of compliment that does not necessarily arouse gratitude. It is out of all proportion to Dominion population and is expensively against Auckland’s economic interests to an unfair degree. Because of disproportionate unemployment the ratepayers of Auckland are overloaded with an excessive burden. The Hospital and Charitable Aid Board alone is spending over £40,000 a year on the relief of social distress almost entirely attributable to unemployment, and other institutions and humane associations, also, are. providing generous aid in different forms. Moreover, many local bodies have spent money freely on the provision of public works, the City Council itself, in spite of its laggard ways, having expended £50,000 last year on the direct relief of unemployment. And yet the position still is serious. What is being done about it, and what has been done? Ministers of the Crown assert that the Government already has achieved wonders and heaten every preceding record of State relief. Three thousand additional men have been placed on public works under the Government’s control. That, no doubt, is a creditable achievement, but it does not appear to have made any appreciable difference to the acute unemployment in Auckland. A thousand applications for work pour into the local Labour Department every week, and the number of placements is and has been meagre for nearly a whole year. Last January, at the middle of summer, when there was no excuse about seasonal unemployment, the number of public works employees was the highest on record for many years, but at the end of that month, as also at the close of February, the number off unfilled applications, too, was abnormally high. An appeal for relief has been made to Caesar, but thq Caesar of politics himself appears to be in difficulty about fulfilling his promise to abolish unemployment and make New Zealand a paradise of material prosperity. Sir Joseph Ward, replying to an urgent telegram from a Ministerial colleague who has been studying the local unemployment problem at first hand, expresses something like surprise that the Auckland City Council had not applied for a State subsidy of £25,000 for unemployment relief on the terms of the Prime Minister’s general offer to the main municipalities in the four large centres of population. Therefore, “the matter rests with the Auckland corporation.” Unfortunately, the City Council, never too alert, it is true, had not heard of Sir Joseph’s offer or, at least, had not received it. Even Mr. Baildon ought to know quite well that politicians never give anything unless someone impressively has asked for it. It is now quite clear that the new Government, like the old one, means to transfer its responsibilities in respect of unemployment relief on to the bowed shoulders of local government bodies. This is a poor ending to a valiant tale of promised achievement. The ratepayers of Auckland are to be called upon to find a sum of money equal to an increase of 2Jd a £ on the rates in order to extricate the United Government from an embarrassing situation. The same people will also have to pay a share of the taxation involved in providing the State’s subsidy. A political Minister has complained that critics have tried to make political capital out of the unemployment problem. Who can benefit politically from anything of the kind? The Goverment is in power because no other political party is in a position to ptit the Government out, and will not attempt to do so for fear an emergency election might thrust many politicians among the unemployed. It is for the Government to realise thgt its power is the juroduct of its skill in making promises, and that if unpopularity follows, that will be attributable to the political weakness for breaking promises. THE MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT UNIFICATION of motor by-laws has long been needed in this country. A motorist driving at a constant speed might at present be within the law in one place and breaking by-laws wholesale in another. The humane task of standardising the regulations is to he undertaken by the newly-established Ministry of Transport. Though the work is undoubtedly one of some importance, it is a poor tribute to the sanity of the country’s politics that a separate Ministry has to be created to handle it. So far the only really important sequel to the establishment of- the Transport Ministry is that a tenant has thereby been found for the mansion usually occupied by the Prime Minister, hut standing empty sinee Sir Joseph Ward determined not to leave his Heretaunga home. Despite its sumptuous setting, the Ministry of Transport remains a piece of showmanship. The fact that its first task is the relatively simple one of standardising the motor by-laws—a task that the automobile associations of the country, acting in concert with the local bodies, should have been able to accomplish without difficulty—shows how little real demand there was for its creation. _ Such a Ministry can deal only with sectional interests, not national ones, and then only in a limited manner. Supposing that there are 120,000 private ear-owners in the country, these represent practically the limit of those whom, under existing conditions, the Transport Minister’s beneficent works can hope to embrace. The remainder of the population has no other direct interest in ears than concern for its personal safety. Here the Transport Department will give little aid, and the last word, a! before, will remain with the judiciary. If “transport” means transport of the multitude, then Mr. Veitch and his staff should take over trains, trams and buses on a national scale. There is no prospect of tlieir doing so, nor even of their influencing the Railway Department in its operation of its buses, or the private tramway companies in the conduct of their particular systems. Meanwhile, the vital concerns of motorists themselves will remain in the hands of other departments. Decisions about taxation on cars, tyres and benzine will be principally dictated by the fiscal exigencies of the moment and not by the opinions of the Advisory Council. The Public Works Department will continue to dominate the Main Highways system, the Railway Department will make level crossings or bridge them as it wills, and the Postal Department will still have to collect registration fees. Ho the quiet residential backwater of Tinakori Road, Wellington, is perhaps entirely appropriate as a setting for the new Ministry's activities.