ANGRY WORDS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1943, Page 3

ANGRY WORDS

HEARD IN PARLIAMENT ON SUBJECT OF STATE SALARIES PREMIER ALLEGES RADIO RACKET. MR J. A. LEE’S DENIAL. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON. This Day. Rather bitter •feeling was shown in the course of a discussion which arose in the House of Representatives last night when the Democratic Labour member for Grey Lynn (Mr J. A. Lee) criticised the salary of £1,250 per annum paid to Mr James Roberts as a member of the Waterfront Control Commission. The Prime Minister, Mr Fraser, said Mr Lee had always been in favour of large salaries and now because he was opposed politically to Mr Roberts he attacked him. "Mr Roberts is the highest paid new employee of the State since the war broke out,” said Mr Lee. “He compares very ill with the postman 18s a week and the old age pensioner.” The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Parry: “You did not mention Scrim’s name.”

Mr Lee: “I am talking about new occupations created since the war. I wonder if Mr Roberts would be a commissioner if the waterfront had a vote.”

“This is a welcome change of attitude in the honourable member for Grey Lynn,” said the Prime Minister. “He has always advocated large salaries, particularly for his friends, including a man whose hand did not shake when he tried to put across a racket of £7OOO a year." Mr Lee: “The Prime Minister knows who fixed the £7OOO a year. It was fixed by the Minister of Finance, and against my will.” “STOPPED IT QUICK.” The Prime Minister: “I know who stopped it. I did. We know what sort of racket was attempted in the Commercial Broadcasting Service. We stopped it quick. The honourable gentleman did not try to stop it.” An Opposition member: “Tell us more about it.” Continuing, Mr Fraser said that Mr Lee’s attack on Mr Roberts was inspired because he disagreed with Mr Roberts politically. If the honourable member for Grey Lynn had held the same views as Mr Roberts he would have been all in favour of his salary. The reason for Mr Roberts’s salary as a commissioner was that certain men were wanted as commissioners and were earning high incomes in their private capacities. The salaries that had to be fixed had to bear some relation to what they were earning at their own work. There was nothing wrong with that. If the honourable member would come out for equality of income for everybody, then he and the honourable member might have something to fix up. The question was how was it to be done? Was the major-general to get the same as'the private? A better course would be increasingly to add to the age benefits under social security, for instance, ■ and raise the general level of remuneration in the community rather than fiddle about with taxation. “The honourable member has tried to score his puny point in as mean a way as possible,” added the Prime Minister. MR LEE’S REJOINDER. Mr Lee said he had nothing to do with the fixing of the salary of the present Controller of Broadcasting or the late Controller of Commercial Broadcasting. When it was originally suggested that the late controller should handle radio broadcasting and supply all services on a commission basis of 221. per cent, at which figure the person providing it would have gone bankrupt, someone in Cabinet, not associated with him in any way, insisted that' there should be a reduction to a net commission under the impression that it would reduce the amount to a figure which Mr Lee considered was too high. The Minister of Labour, Mr Webb, said the salaries for members of the Commission were fixed before the appointment of the men. When it was realised that the Commission was handling, cargo valued at £200,000,000 the salaries were not large. One of the men who protested against the high salaries was Mr Roberts himself. Nearly all the work at the small ports was done by the unions themselves. No man had ever done a greater job on the waterfront than had Mr Roberts. The people who opposed the contract system were working in .unity with the shipowners who did not like to see their power taken from them.