RESULTS TO DATE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 September 1943, Page 3

RESULTS TO DATE

IN ASSISTING RETURNED SERVICE MEN ADDRESS BY MINISTER OF REHABILITATION. DEFENCE OF LAND SALES ACT. . (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. The work already done in the establishment of ex-service men in civilian occupations was outlined by the Minister of Rehabilitation, Major C. F. Skinner, in an address last night in the Congregational Hall. Cambridge Terrace, Wellington. He gave figures showing the number of men assisted and the class of help that had been given. Eighty-nine men and women had been assisted into business, the occupations including butchery, grocery, carrying, hairdressing, dairy and refreshment rooms, milk round, hotel-keeper, billiard saloon-keeper and chimney sweeping. ' The Minister said that already of 214 applications 119 soldiers had been assisted on to freehold property; over 30 had received 100 per cent of loan money to buy new homes, 269 had received similar assistance to buy existing houses, and 14 leasehold farms had been balloted for and men placed on them in the last few days. The Government would not place a man in an uneconomical proposition. Of 114 applications declined 49 had been refused because the farms were not suitable or the men not fit to work the types of farm they sought. Others were rejected on account of a lack of knowledge of farming, and some of these had been put into the farm training scheme. Seventy more returned men had been assisted to take university courses. Of the 24.000 men returned to New Zealand 13,000 had gone back to their old jobs without rehabilitation assistance, 1300 had gone back to their own businesses, and Biz were still undecided about their future. The i Government was going to appoint rehabilitation officers overseas to travel on the hospital ships and contact the men daily so that preparations could be made to help them when they arrived. , _ ... , Discussing the Servicemens Settlement and Land Sales Act, the Minister said it was an honest attempt to prevent the price of land sky-rocketing as it was today. If land values were allowed to soar it would upset the whole economic system. No genuine farmer was apprehensive about the Act. The Government was quite prepared to stand or fall by it and would not deviate one inch from what was an honest attempt to stabilise The'present Government, said the Minister, had done more to give the people economic security than any other Government in any other part of the world. The Government had laid down a policy of rehabilitation second to none in the world. The Rehabilitation Council was representative of every type of business and every walk of llf ßeplying to a question, the Minister said the present Rehabilitation Act applied only to men discharged from this war.