SKILLED LABOUR FROM AUSTRALIA

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 48, 27 February 1939, Page 7

SKILLED LABOUR FROM AUSTRALIA

STATE HAS FIRST CALL EXPLANATION BY MINISTER f Per Press Association.] CHRISTCHURCH. Feb. 26. A reminder to prospective employers that the skilled works now being recruited in Australia would be under contract to take service for at least 12 months with contractors and subcontractors under the State Housing scheme, was given by the Minister of Housing (Hon. H. T. Armstrong). The Minister said that the broad purpose of the present immigration of artisans was to give relief generally to the building trade throughout the Dominion, but, as the Government was undertaking the expense of bringing the men here it naturally required to have first call on their services. This was provided for in the form of an agreement which each man would sign before receiving an assisted passage.

The Minister said that all the men would be engaged in Wellington and Auckland, where the housing shortage was specially acute.

"This particular scheme, which is restricted to the immigration of persons skilled in certain specified occupations, marks the first assisted immigration venture undertaken since the Labour Government came into power,” said Mr. Armstrong. differs from the assisted passage

scheme which operated under earlier administrations, in that the nomination method has been dropped in favour of individual selection on the grounds of industrial and medical fitness, and in other ways is novel to recent New Zealand experience.”