MORE POPULATION

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 423, 3 May 1937, Page 3

MORE POPULATION

TWO MAIN SOURCES Five Million Club The first Dominion conference of the New Zealand Five Million Club, at Wellington, Hon. W. E. Barnard. Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has organised the club stated: — “The organisation is not a mere immigration society. The object proposed all through has been to increase the population of New Zealand, and the two methods referred to by the Mayor have throughout been placed in the forefront of the work which has been done. The first method is ono of natural increase, and this means examining the decline dispassionately and calmly, after whch it is hoped to be able to suggest a practical remedy. The second method is the increase of population by means of immigration. While I am hopeful that much may be done to arrest the decline in the birth-rate, I agree that we cannot expect within measurable disance of time to add to the numbers of the people in this country by that means alone.

"We are compelled to direct our thoughts and attention to the problem of immigration, a problem which will be in the forefront of the Imperial Conference with the question of the redistribution of the white peoples, which will be one of the principal issues before Empire statesmen. Immigration is a matter of immediate importance, and we must devote our consideration to it, but the matter of long-range importance is the question of increasing our population from within.

“This organisation aims to devote its energies to both these aspects of the great population problem. Whatever we do will be done with the idea of absorbing in useful employment those citizens of New Zealand who are now existing as unemployed. We are not unmindful of the claims of our own citizens to consideration in connection with the problem of unemployment. We believe that by a proper policy of expansion i(, will be possible to place at work many of our citizens for whom under the existing conditions there seems no means of placing in permanent employment. “We also feel that the solution of the general economic problems of this country, and the maintenance of everything that can be covered in the word heritage, are dependent not only on the expansion possibilities of the Dominion, but on expansion at a faster rate than we have experienced for many years. I have referred on several occasions with approval to the statement made long ago that it is better to bring the consumers of primary products to the country producing them than to supply them thousands of miles away, under conditions where they may refuse or reject New Zealand butter and cheese. If we can bring them here they will consume the products of this country. This aspect must appeal to the primary producers of New Zealand. Pioneer Age Ended, Another Begun. “We are not looking forward to a Greater Wellington or a Greater Auckland. There will be little gained by the endeavour to make Wellington into a kind of greater Sydney. But we can look forward to making towns of from 10,000 to 15,000 to 20,000 people in New Zealand into cities of from 20,000 to 100,000 people. “The pioneers of this country laid the foundations of New Zealand here. All that we have done since has been designed, it seems to me, to meet the conditions of a so much larger population than under present trends we can obtain. I feel that while the pioneer stage has ended, a new stage has opened, a very difficult stage, in. deed. It will require the same qualities which animated those who founded this country, but it will require an essential degree of independence because in these modern times there is a complication of difficulties far exceeding the simpler problems which our forefathers had to face, when they landed in this country and proceeded to carve out their homes. We hope the organisation to which ws belong will be able to make its contributions to the solution of the problem, the difficulties of which we do not minimise.”