DEFINITE POLICY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 March 1943, Page 3

DEFINITE POLICY

NEEDED IN DEALING WITH MANPOWER OPPOSITION LEADER’S CRITICISM. DENUNCIATION OF MARKETING CONTROL. ■; (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “It is correct to say that the Government has no definite manpower policy and the country does not know where it is on this vital problem,” said' the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland, continuing the Address-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives last night. Mr Holland said that the newspapers were calling the present position a muddle, and so it was. It was causing concern to tens of thousands of New Zealand people, and the Government seemed to be unable to give a clear indication of a coherent policy. Mr Holland said that thousands of men had been conscripted, taken into the Army, released, or held there without any settled policy on the Government’s part. It was hopeless and impossible to train an efficient army by methods like those. In any case, there was no justification for the number of men held in the armed forces in the Dominion at present. Industry was doing a magnificent job for the war effort under increasing manpower difficulties. It was a tribute to private enterprise that so much had been accomplished in spite of the problems facing it. Mr Lee (Democratic Labour, Grey Lynn): “We have socialised life and individualised debt.” YOUTHS & TRAINING. Mr Holland said that in New Zealand today thousands of men were in the armed forces who were not rendering any useful service and who should be returned to industry in the interests of the war effort as a whole. Mr Lee: “Our commitments are too vast.” Mr Holland: “I am not going to develop that argument, but I would not disagree with him.” (Laughter). Making reference to young men under 21 in the Army, Mr Holland said he wished to make an earnest plea that something be done to release them so that they could continue their training in trades and professions. Apparently the Government’s intention was to keep them in camp indefinitely. He suggested that they should be given six months’ intensive military training and then sent back to industry to continue preparing themselves for the shortage of trained people inevitable when the war was over." “USELESS ENCUMBRANCE." “The Internal Marketing Department is a useless encumbrance on the country,” Mr Holland continued. “Judged by its record, it is neither useful nor ornamental, and everything it handles become scarcer, dearer and poorer in quality. Its operations have seriously bumped 'up the cost of living.” Mr Holland said he recently heard the Minister of Marketing/Mr Barclay, broadcast that the department’s loss in selling goods under cost was the consumers’ gain. “What utter bilge for a Minister to put over the people,” he said. The Government did not have private funds to meet losses and the taxpayers had to bear any losses.

The Prime Minister had claimed at Christchurch that the cost of living had been held in check. The official year books showed that compared with the 1941 standard the costs had 'increased 51 pei’ cent in 1938 and 65 per cent in 1940, and last October was 70.9. The increase since Labour took office amounted to 7s 7d in the pound. There were also the hidden increases represented in the subsidies in sugar and bread for which loans had to be raised and paid by the country. Mr Holland urged that a Parlia? mentary committee of inquiry be appointed to investigate war expenditure. It would be no exaggeration to say that hundreds of thousands of pounds could be saved in consequence. BAN ON POLICE PUBLICITY. A ban on the publication in the Police Journal of representations being made by the Police Association to the Government for increased wages was criticised by Mr Holland when urging that the present system of censorship and publicity be overhauled. He said things had reached an intolerable stage when State departmental journals were prohibited from publishing their own case for the information of the staff. If the police force had a case to present then it had a fundamental right to state it through its own journal, and to press it openly. The Prime Minister: “There will be no right to agitate among the forces of law and order during the war.” Mr Holland said there could never 'be any satisfaction obtained by driving grievances like that underground. When the Prime Minister prohibited publication of that sort of news it was an injustice and the police force had been hamstrung and tongue-tied. Mr Holland, also criticised the Government for not paying the sheepfarmers in full the increased wool price. He said it had handed them worthless bonds, and the National Party on becoming the Government would convert them to interest-bearing and negotiable bonds. Trades Hall domination in national affairs had become too powerful, as was shown when army commanders could not permit their unit orchestras to play even at patriotic concerts without first receiving the sanction of the trade union. “That is‘going too far, and it is time it was stopped,” said Mr Holland. MINISTER IN REPLY DEFENCE OF MANPOWER POLICY. WAR CONDITIONS THE REAL GUIDE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. Factors governing the manpower situation were discussed by the Minister of Supply, Mr Sullivan, when replying to criticism by the Leader .of the Opposition during the Address-in-Rcply debate in the House last night. He said that manpower policy and decisions were entirely related to ex-

ternal war conditions existing at the time. The Minister said that the Leader of the Opposition had spoken of manpower in very vague terms. He had brought forward no evidence to show there was unsatisfactory administration of the manpower position, but simply made a general and prejudiced assertion that there was a muddle. In all the democracies there had been criticism in regard to manpower. For a long period the complaint of Opposition members had been that the Government was not doing enough and should send more men away, but almost overnight there had been a sudden change of front and the complaint now was that the Government had done too much and entered into too great commitments. The Opposition had been inconsistent in its attitude on the question of manpower. The real guide to Government policy in this country, as it was to any country fighting a war, said the Minister, must be-the war conditions. Before Japan came into the war it was quite all right for this country to organise an expeditionary force and to organise in a modest way for local defence, but when the country was threatened with invasion the Government had no alternative but to organise the military forces to the utmost of the manpower resources. POSSIBLE RELAXATION. “It looks today as if our security is somewhat better than it was, and there can be some reasonable relaxation of our commitments,” said the Minister, “but when we see enormous concentrations of strength up in the Pacific we have to move with the greatest care and circumspection and cannot afford to relax unduly. If there is a manpower muddle and our industries have been robbed unduly to feed the armed services, how has it been possible for New Zealand to have dbrie 'what it has in the way of farm and factory production, both for overseas and local use? The Leader of the Opposition’s criticism is not reconciliable with the facts. “All the facts show that common sense has been displayed in making the best of a most difficult situation. With the relaxation of tension to some extent a large number can be relieved from the military forces to go back into industry, but even these cannot be 100 per cent relieved, and will have to be at the call of the armed forces if there is a threat to our shores and their services are again required.” BONDS & BACKING. “It was a truly wicked thing for the Leader of the Opposition to refer to New Zealand Government bonds as worthless,” said Mr Sullivan with some warmth. “It was a wholly wrong and unforgivable thing for him to say. The bonds have the backing of the country and the Leader of the Opposition knows it. I can tell him that the woolgrowers were willing to accept 10 per cent of the increase in bonds if the one per cent was not withheld. Opposition members: “You offered non-transferable bonds.” The Prime Minister: “The bonds can be deposited in the banks.” Mr Sullivan: “After all, the woolgrowers got the whole of the money the Government received from the United Kingdom.” Mr Holland: ‘What about the one per cent?” Mr Sullivan: “That did not come from Britain. It came from local industry. The worst criticism about the wool money has come from the Leader of the Opposition and not from the woolgrowers.” Mr Sullivan described Mr Holland’s reference to the police force as dangerous talk. The public would not thank him for suggesting that the police should have the right to say what they liked in their paper in the way of agitation. The Leader of the Opposition would have earned the country’s approval if he had supported the Government in preventing the use of the police paper for making the police force less stable and less efficic it. “The Dominion has a fine police force and one of which it can feel proud,” said Mr Sullivan, “but the Leader of the Opposition is advocating a dangerous course in suggesting that the sky is the limit in what the force can say in their paper.”