POPULATE OR PERISH

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 September 1938, Page 6

POPULATE OR PERISH

PLANNED IMMIGRATION ADVOCATED POSITION OF NEW ZEALAND, ADDRESS TO ROTARY CLUB. “Populate or perish, those are the alternatives facing us today,” declared Mr L. R. Palmer, M.A., Dip. J., Lecturer on Economics at Wellington College and a member of the Dominion Settlement Association, in an address to yesterday's meeting of the Masterton Rotary Club.' Full emphasis was laid by Mr Palmer on the urgent necessity for New Zealand to extend her population and he said “At the present rate of progress the population will be stationary in 1960 and in 2040 the number of people who will be in the Dominion to celebrate the 200th birthday will be 200,000.” The president, Rotarian H. H. Daniell presided and in addition to members there was a large and representative attendance of visitors. Mr Daniell extended a welcome to the speaker and to the visitors. Mr Palmer said that of all the humanitarian movements that the Rotary Club had sponsored during its career in New Zealand not a single one would return such a good dividend as the present campaign for increased population. The Dominion Association had nothing to do with party politics. It was concerned with a subject far and away more important than politics. If first things came first it was a subject that would receive consideration long before others that were at present worrying the country. All mankind was engaged in deriving from the resources of nature as good a living as possible and to do that the factors of brains, labour and capital were required. In order that a country should be prosperous, all four' agents must be mixed in the right proportion. If those things were not in the right proportion cur capitalistic community would be out of balance.

“We say,” added Mr Palmer, “that New Zealand has nowhere reached its optimum population. Do we believe that New Zealand is fully populated with a million and a half people? If that were so, then Heaven help the potentialities of this so-called God’s own country. Wo say that the optimum population is to be found further up the scale. Increased population could only come from two sources: a natural increase by the people of the Dominion or immigration. Those were the only two avenues open. The position with regard to natural increase was most disheartening. Our birthrate had declined until in 1935 it was the lowest of any country in the Empire with the exception of England and Wales. Not only was 7 our birthrate declining, but we were becoming an aged race.- In the last ten years our population had increased by 140,000, but the number of children had decreased. Children under the age of five years had decreased by 17,000 and from 5 to 10 years by 5,000, while the number of persons over the age of 60 years had increased by 50,000. The net result was that from 1960 to 1970 the population of the Dominion would become stationary. We would never reach the 1“ million mark at the present rate of progress. By 1971, so. great would be the loss of young people that the population would go down and down until in 2040 when the Dominion celebrated its 200th birthday there would only be 200,000 people in the country. That was if they were lucky enough to live unmolested in a country which they failed to populate. The natural increase was the most desirable if they could only whip up the population to the seriousness of the position. Discussing the causes of the declining birthrate, Mr Palmer said the family as a unit was being< left out in the cold by the onward rush of material progress. It should be the aim of all wise legislators to bring the family into true relationship with material progress. He was quite certain that in future they would have to face the question of a differential payment for the family man. although he realised that it might be establishing a dangerous precedent. Mothers should also be placed on a pedestal and made the. most pampered women in society. “Whatever happens to the natural increase,” he continued, “we say that we must have immigration as an immediate necessity. We will not have I anything to do with the haphazard im- i migration schemes of the past, but will have a scientifically planned scheme with provision for after-care of the immigrants for at least two years. As yet we have no cut-and-dried immigration scheme.” Immigration, far from being a cause of unemployment, would rather increase employment. One reason why jobs and unemployed were side by side was the immobility of labour. People could not afford to move to where the jobs were offering. Another reason was occupational unsuitability. “We say that immigration, planned and adequately financed, is an urgent necessity for this country,” continued Mr Palmer, who added, "New Zealand has everything to gain and nothing to lose by immigration.” Without waiting for a plan, something could be done by lifting some of the restrictions on immigration into New Zealand and seeing what type of person came in. The men could be engaged as farm labour and the women as domestics. Immigration could be justified economically and as a policy could be justified right up to the hilt.

Summarising his contentions in favour of a policy of immigration, Mr Palmer said it would: Swell our national economy and enable better use to be made of our natural resources; result in a wider distribution of overhead charges; and enable us to do justice, not only to ourselves, but to the rest of the Empire. We would become a more stable country and would not need to depend so much on overseas markets; we would cut a better figure in the eyes of the world and no longer would other nations of the Pacific cast envious eyes at us and say: “You are playing the dog in the manger, you have too much land, we have not enough, we are going to take some of it from you.” Mr Palmer was accorded a hearty vote of thanks by acclamation on the motion of Mr T. Jordan.