INCENTIVES NEEDED TO ATTRACT TEACHERS TO HYDRO TOWN SCHOOLS

Taupo Times, Volume XIV, Issue 41, 27 May 1965, Page 1

INCENTIVES NEEDED TO ATTRACT TEACHERS TO HYDRO TOWN SCHOOLS

The need for housing and financial incentives to attract teachers to hydro towns, has been emphasised by the chairman of the Taupo Labour representation committee, Mr B. S. Gustafson. He was speaking at the annual meeting of the Labour Party's Tokoroa branch.

Mr Gustafson, himself a secondary school teacher, criticised Mr Shand's comments at Turangi recently when the Minister said that construetion camps could not expect special treatment and would have to wait their turn. Mr Shand had also stated that no one ever got evervthing he wanted. Mr Gustafson said that education in Tokoroa, Mangakino, and probably at Turangi had and would suffer as a result of the Government's shortsighted refusal to spend adequately or plan sufficiently to develop the raw material of education and give the children of Tokoroa ancl the hydro towns the qpportunitv of a first rate education. The first necessity was j for housing and financial | ineentives to attract wellqualified staff to t.hese rapidly expanding pioneer areas. Questioning the National Party's apparent acceptance of the social security system, Mr Gustafson said that under National the Welfare state had fallen well behind that of European nations. A complete overhaul of the social security system

was necessary in New Zealand and especially in the provision of decent old age pensions and housing, and in the provision of free and adequate hospitals. doctors, specialists, and medicine. The provision of free dental and optical treatment would also have to be examined closely. Mr Gustafson reminded the meeting that just prior to the last election, Mrs Stevenson had announced that hospitals were to he built in Tokoroa and Taupo. These hospitals had not yet been started, However, with an eye to votes, it was possible that the National Government would begin construetion just before the next election. | Mr Gustafson said that | the recent Labour Conference had revealed at least four major areas of policy in which there were widedifferenceE between Labour and National Underneath these differenees, claimed Mr Gustafson, was a basic differenee in principle. Labour stood for social justice, equal opportunity, and the brotherhood of man- ! kind, while the National ! Party, in spite of its protestations to the contrary, stood for the right of the minority to exploit the majority. Mr Gustafson said that in the economic field, National had borrowed hundreds of millions of pounds over the last few years, thus increasing the gap between overj seas income and expendl- ! ture. The eventual result I would be catastrophic un- ! less the Government was | willing to introduce overall planning of production and export marketing. ! :