WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 4 June 1921, Page 5

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

UNEMPLOYMENT. LABOR PARTY’S ALLEGATIONS. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, June 1. Mr. J. McCombs, in addition to persisting in his assertion that the Government is “engineering the unemployment trouble’’ for ,the purpose of permanently reducing wages, is now joining with the other Christchurch Labor members of the House of Repieseiitatives, Mr. E. J. Howard and Mr. D. G. Sullivan, in implying that Ministers are juggling with the public accounts with the same end in view. “We do not believe the statement about the empty Treasury” these gentlemen say in chorus, “because according to the Audi-tor-General there was on March 31, £1,■603,977 in the Public Works account with authority for a transfer from the Consolidated fund of £500,000.” This amount of money, they contend, would be sufficient to keep every available man in the country employed at full wages in catching up the work deferred during the war. If this were not so, they go on to say, in the alternative there would be the simple expedient of calling Parliament together and appropriating for public works such money as might be required from the six million surplus.

MANIFESTLY ABSURD. In his reply to the indignant and protesting Labor members the acting-Prime Minister is not so tactful as he usually is in such circumstances. He overlooks the fact that others than Mr. McCombs and his colleagues are in ignorance of the financial position of the country.

“Your assertions are .incorrect as to the public finances,” he .writes, “and your statement that the Government is deliberately creating an unemployment problem for the purpose of forcing down wages is so manifestly absurd that I am forced to the conclusion that you have some political object in promulgating such a charge.” Of course, the Minister might not have found it convenient, or even practicable at this stage, to analyse the Dominion’s finances in any great detail, but he could have explained to Mr. McCombs and his colleagues, and through them to the world at large, just why the most rigid econonfy in all public expenditure is necessary at the present time./ It was tempting to make the tu quoqiie retort to such a charge, but it was not judicious.

TELEPHONE OPERATORS. Mr. T. M. Wilford, the leader of the Liberal Opposition, just before his departure upon another visit to America yesterday, addressed a letter to the Postmastei)-General in which he emphatically protested against the increased hours of working imposed upon telephone operators. “I wonder,” he wrote to the Minister, “if you have ever entered the exchange and seen the monotonous and tiring work required of the operators. I wonder if you have had the experience, even as an experiment of wearing the receiver clamped for a short time to your head. If you have, you will understand how nerveracking it must become.” Mr. Wilford draws a very distressing picture of the hardships and discomforts endured by the telephone girls, and left upon his holiday with a fervent hope that his letter at least would open the eyes of the Minister “to the wrong which is being done.” In justice to Mr. Coates it must be said he has given some personal attention to this matter, but probably it is the will of the permanent head of the department that has prevailed.

THE BUTTER PARADOX. The unhappy Minister of Agriculture is being allowed no rest in connection with what the ‘Evening Post styles, not inappropriately, the butter paradox. Mr. Nosworthy has admitted that he personally was opposed to the subsidy to the producers, and that the »ocal price of butter is now far above the London parity, but in Christchurch the other day he protested that the contract between the Government and the producers was made “when there was not the slighest whisper of any collapse in the outside market." But standing in cold print is a statement made by Mr. Massey before the contract was concluded winch entirely refuted his colleague’s assertion. “The ‘price of butter has fallen at Home,” it runs, “and the producers realise that the price will be lower than it has been for the last twelve or eighteen months, but when the conference meets next week I think satisfactory arrangements will be made for butter. The effect of the arrangement made is that the local consumers are paying from 7d to -8d a pound above the London canty.