MR. DICKIE HITS OUT

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1006, 24 June 1930, Page 9

MR. DICKIE HITS OUT

REFORM MEETING AT ELTHAM Special to THE SUN NEW PLYMOUTH, Today. The charge that some of the expenditure of the United Government was obviously in the nature of reward for services was levelled by Mr. H. C. Dickie, M.P., in an address to the Reform League at Eltham. Tho Alelbourne-Bluff shipping service which had been agitated for in Southland for so long was being subsidised to the extent of £ 35.000, yet Air. Dickie said he had read in Southland recently that on one trip the vessel engaged had carried only 70 tons of cargo. Delegations to the Geneva Labour Conference had been refused by both Air. Massey and Mr. Coates, yet the Labour Party bad persuaded the present Government to send such a delegation at a cost of £9,000. Unemployment had been created. Mr. Dickie contended, by the raising of unemployment relief rates from 12s and 9s a day for married and single men to 14s all round. Young men had came to him. said the speaker, asking for assistance to get on the Governments relief work, yet he had found that some of those men had left farm jobs at 30s a week and found. lie believed that such increase In relief wages had increased the country’s unemployment bill by £IOO,OOO. “Another piece of unnecessary expenditure calculated to please a section of the community at the expense of the whole country.” was Mr. Dickie's description of the Government’s proposal to bridge the gap in the South Island Main Trunk line. The speaker had seen the country from land and sea. but it was not until he had seen it from an airplane that be had realised fully how futile it was to talk of the line assisting closer settlement and production.