WAR ON RABBITS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 September 1941, Page 6

WAR ON RABBITS

DURING SUMMER MONTHS SUBSTANTIAL SUBSIDY OFFERED. STATEMENT BY MINISTER OF LABOUR. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. A subsidy on the wages of certain classes of men employed on rabbit destruction will be payable immediately and until March 31 next, the Minister of Labour (Mr Webb) announced today. The subsidy payable will be £3 10s a week in respect of registered and eligible suitable unemployed men, and £3 a week in respect of men not actually unemployed, but whose engagement on less important work is nearing a close, and whose experience would materially assist in the immediate objective. It is not proposed that farms should be denied necessary labour and one safeguard provided is that any men employed under the scheme will be made available for shearing or other seasonal work if required. Mr Webb said rabbits in New Zealand caused an annual national loss of approximately £2,500,000, while in the year 1939-40 New Zealand exported over eleven million rabbitskins. He therefore hoped that every rabbit \ board and committee, especially in the Otago Central and Southland districts, would take advantage of the subsidy plan to increase its normal complement of rabbiters. He hoped, too, that runholders would serve their own ultimate interests by a systematic and intensive killing of rabbits and that “rabbit farming” would become a thing of the past.