MOBILE LAND ARMY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1942, Page 3

MOBILE LAND ARMY

FORMATION DECIDED ON IN AUSTRALIA. (Special Australian Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 7. . The Federal Government has decided to set up a mobile land army, probably of 20,000 men, the Minister of Commerce, Mr Scully, has announced. The Minister said that the land army would receive the appropriate award rates, but where there was no award, the minimum payment would be the basic wage. “Men from itinerant land jobs and others with knowledge of farm and station work will form the basis of the land army,”- said Mr Scully. “In addition, the Army will release skilled men for seasonal work such as harvesting.” City workers are asked to offer their services during holiday periods, when they will assist with work such as fruit-picking, which does not call for high skill. It would be bad policy for Australia to put another 100,000 men into camp unless facilities for training and equipping them were adequate, warned Mr R. G. Menzies, lecturing at Adelaide University. It should be ensured that the added strength which the extra men brought to the fighting services offset the effect of their subtraction from productive industry, Mr Menzies said. Australia’s economy had taken the unprecedented strain of war with notable stability.