STRANDED NEW ZEALANDERS.

Taranaki Daily News, 17 July 1919, Page 3

STRANDED NEW ZEALANDERS.

■*tii ANGRY WITH GOVERNMENT. "CALLOUS OFFICIAL ATTITUDE." (From Our Own Correspondent.) Wellington, July 14. I The New Zealanders who reached Wellington to-day, after being stranded in Australia for many weeks, state that they are going to present their grievances to the Minister for Internal Affairs by means of a deputation. They are very angry with the Government, and particularly with the Hon. G. W. Russell, who issued the order prohibiting passenger traffic between Australia and New Zealand on account of the influenza epidemic. They consider that the losses and actual hardships many of them have suffered were due to what they describe as "the callous official attitude" of the authorities in this country. "We consider that the Government treated us abominably," said one of the passengers to-day. "New Zealand women and children, as well as men, wore left in Sydney and Melbourne week after week, when the Government knew ,that many of us were suffering actual privation. You must remember that our troubes had started long before the seamen went on strike. Wo were placed in exile when the New Zealand Government issued an order forbidding steamer passengers from Australia to land in New Zealand. . That order may have been a reasonable precaution so far as it affected ordinary visitors to the Dominion. But the Government shut out citizens of the" Dominion. Surely it' would have been easy fts have allowed us to come back and placed us in quarantine at this end ittiy necessary period. We have becn"«4M the truth was that the Government, in spite of much talk, had failed to pwrMo quarantine accommodation. Wtf »?e going to: try to get some J>nw We. axe