WARM REJOINDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 June 1943, Page 3

WARM REJOINDER

TO OPPOSITION LEADER’S CRITICISM. MINISTER DEFENDS DEPARTMENTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association. I WELLINGTON, This Day. A warm defence of the Departments of Industries and Commerce and Supply in reply to criticism by the Leader of the Opposition was made by the Minister of Supply and Munitions, Mr Sullivan, in the Budget debate in the House of Representatives last evening. Mr Sullivan said Mr Holland had made a bitter reference to the Department of Industries and Commerce by calling it the "Department of Inefficiency and Chaos.” "I want to tell the House and the people of New Zealand that there is no inefficiency and no chaos in the department which includes the Ministry of Supply,” said Mr Sullivan. "It is a characteristic of the honourable gentleman that he is somewhat unrestrained in his language. I suggest to him that he was desperately unfair.” ' He would frankly admit, continued Mr Sullivan, that the Industries and Commerce Department had had to face real difficulties arising out of the manpower shortage. While on the one hand the work of the department had grown enormously because of its war work, the armed forces had drawn off numbers of the staff. The department found tiself getting behind in its work-in tobacco supplies, for example. - This was not because of a serious . shortage of raw tobacco —though it was in somewhat short supply —but because the National Service Department had found it impossible to find sufficient labour for the tobacco factories. The tobacco output therefore was declining.

The Minister of Railways, Mr Semple: “No one will die of that.”

Mr Doidge (Opposition, Tauranga): “Some people would rather die than go without tobacco.” After naming prominent business men associated with the Ministry of Supply and appointed by the Government to assist it in the tremendous problem of the war effort, Mr Sullivan asked the Leader of the Opposition if the bringing in of nationally known and respected business men was responsible for the alleged inefficiency and chaos of the department. They were the best men available in business today. Was the Leader of the Opposition criticising them? asked Mr Sullivan. He added that the Leader of the Opposition had perpetrated the most outrageous and unfair criticism of as fine a body of man and women as could be found anywhere.