CHANGES NOTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 May 1938, Page 8

CHANGES NOTED

“NOT TO THE COUNTRY’S CREDIT” VISITING CLERIC’S SUURVEY OF NEW ZEALAND. COMPARISON WITH 45 YEARS AGO. AUCKLAND, May 2. Changes have taken place in New Zealand during the last 45 years which are not to the country’s credit, said Canon E. A. Cowring, now canon of Bristol, but once an officer of the Colonial Bank of New Zealand, gold prospector, explorer, and joint proprietor of a mail service, when commenting upon his impressions of a tour of New Zealand which he started last December. These changes, he said, included such a vast amount of Government interference that it amounted to veiled dictatorship, complete lack of confidence in business, an increase in crime among young men, and more drunkenness than he had even seen in England, where it was bad enough. “Wherever I have been ■ in New Zealand,” said Canon Gowring, “I have found drinking and drunkenness to a greater extent than anything I have seen elsewhere for years. This drunkenness is specially bad at weekends. I was at the opening of King Koroki’s house at Ngaruawahia when the Acting-Minister of Native Affairs, the Hon. F. Langstone, lectured the Maoris upon gambling and ■ drunkenness. It would have been better if he had included pakehas, too. Rowdiness through drinking is so bad that I have not been able to sleep in some places I have been. to on my present tour for the noise to be heard under my hotel windows. EMPLOYMENT & CRIME. “In addition to rowdyism, there is a great deal of crime among young people. Two contributing causes for this are that so many young men lose their employment because the wages fixed are in excess of the value of the job and cannot be borne by the industry, thus making it impossible for the employer to keep men, and the operation of the 40-hour week. I was told by one young factory girl that the 40-hour week is the very worst thing that has happened to young people in this country. “The tone of New Zealand is so different from what it was,” said Canon Gowring. ‘‘The old pioneering spirit of adventure, self-sacrifice, enterprise, and self-reliance has largely gone. The people are splendid, but everywhere I have been, from Bluff to the Bay of Islands, I have been depressed by the nervousness, distrust, irritation, and absence of that confidence which is the very soul of sound business. “I think,” he continued, “that the statement about the United States by Mr Henry Ford, ‘that if finance would get out of government and government would get out of business everything would go again,’ can be truly applied to New Zealand. The first duty of a Government is to protect an individual, not suppress him. I find everything either controlled or licensed and the individual’s liberty being more and more invaded. Yet, when liberty goes truth and justice go, too. A veiled dictatorship is sought to be established. Monopoly is always contrary to the well-being of democracy, and is it not monopolies which the Government is seeking to establish? Dictatorship is virtually in existence in many departments now. I find the same interference with industry. Competition, which is .the greatest incentive to progress and efficiency, is being superceded. CRITICISM OF SPENDING. Because he is chairman of two english local bodies which administer the expenditure of large sums of money, Canon Gowring said he had been particularly interested in New Zealand’s public expenditure. “I have found this to be mounting by leaps and bounds,” he said. “I saw where Mr Semple boasted of having spent some millions on a certain type of work where half could have been saved by proper administration. Enormous sums are being wasted in New Zealand. Any fool can spend money, but what is the use of spending uselessly instead of helping production, of adding to overhead expenses instead of cheapening them. And it is the taxpayer, and not the Government, which has to foot the bill. I think they will be savage enough when they have to do this. “An example of the waste of public money I have witnessed.” said Canon fiowring, “is the Homer tunnel. Here they are spending thousands to build a tunnel to make it safe for people to enter another tunnel, and at Havelock I counted 30 men come down from making a path for people to go up a hill to have a view. These men should have been used for production, for helping the farmer, who is crying out for labour.”