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Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1942. AFTER=WAR ENTERPRISE.

4, J7JVEN in their national, as distinct from their international aspect the problems of economic and social adjustment which will imperatively demand attention as soon as the war is over are of great scope and complexity. These problems centre on the re-establishment in civil life of the members ol our fighting forces —many of them young men who have been deprived in their war service of a normal preparation and training .for civil, occupation. The national duty of doing everything that is possible to enable our soldiers, sailors and airmen to overcome any handicap imposed on them in this way has been recognised in the establishment of the Rehabilitation Board and an address delivered on Sunday evening by the chairman, of that body (Mr Al. Moohan) suggests that, with the backing of the Government and Parliament, it is approaching its responsible and onerous task in the right spirit and with a broad and clear perception of what that task involves.

Nothing was more to the point in what Air Moohan had to say than his insistence on the need for the greatest possible expansion of productive industry. Arrangements have been made for direct assistance by the State to the returning members of our fighting forces —loans for the acquisition of homes and farms, furniture and tools of trade. A considerable amount of State and local body employment is also to be organised and this is very necessary, if only to tide over the period of adjustment. Some classes of public development work, notably forestry, afforestation, river protection undertakings and hydroelectric extension, are well worth organising on a permanent basis and are capable of yielding results highly profitable and advantageous to the Dominion even though it may not always be possible to demonstrate these results, particularly within a brief period, in the terms of a commercial balance sheet.

The root, condition of national prosperity, however, and therefore of the successful rehabilitation of the members of our fighting forces, is a healthy expansion, of productive and selfsupporting industry. The aim must be to establish conditions in which every willing worker will readily find advantageous employment and find it in the conditions that will make best for individual and community welfare. Unqualified approval may be given to some observations on these points made by Air Aloohan. While it is highly desirable to make provision for the absorption of men in the creation of national assets (he said) it will be economic suicide if we don’t try to get the maximum number of people working on the production of goods.- The question of decentralisation is very important. Every encouragement should be given to the establishment of light industries in the smaller centres, so that the population may be encouraged to disperse evenly over the whole Dominion. As to the second point here made by the chairman of the Rehabilitation Board, it is plainly desirable to go even further than he suggested. Nothing would make more definitely for general community welfare in this country, and at the same time for industrial expansion on a sound and assured basis, than a radical reversal of the present ruling tendency for an increasing proportion of our population to huddle, or be huddled, into a few congested metropolitan areas. All that need be asked for is an open-minded approach to the questions here involved —an approach taking account equally of community welfare and of industrial and general economic efficiency. On the eve of what promises to be a period of great expansion, the development of this country is in the hands of its people to make or mar. It is a reproach to common sense that we should even have begun to duplicate the conditions of city crowding and congestion that exist in older-settled lands and in a national outlook worthy of the name we shall be bound to aim at reducing these evils to a minimum. Success in all that the Rehabilitation Board is planning to do or to attempt depends basically on the extension of sound condition of community life and on a vigorous, progressive expansion of productive industry. It may be hoped that in this country, as in many others, much has been learned from the bitter experience of the years that followed the last world war —yeaLs in which human and material resources were cast into disuse and want and destitution became general. Such conditions need not have been tolerated and it may be hoped that they will never be tolerated again.

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19421124.2.3

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 November 1942, Page 2

Word count
Tapeke kupu
755

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1942. AFTER=WAR ENTERPRISE. Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 November 1942, Page 2

Wairarapa Times-Age TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1942. AFTER=WAR ENTERPRISE. Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 November 1942, Page 2

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