NEW RADIO STATION

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20954, 6 November 1939, Page 9

NEW RADIO STATION

£70,000 PROPOSITION HON. A. HAMILTON’S PROTEST OUTSPOKEN CRITICISM (By Telegraph.—Press Association) TAURANGA, Saturday “ A new radio station, and equipment to cost £70,000, while I myself am handling cases for people who place their children in orphanages because they cannot get houses in order to live with them,” said the Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. A. Hamilton, in commenting on the decision of the Government to erect a new building in Auckland to house the commercial broadcasting station IZB at an approximate cost of £70,000. “ Seventy thousand pounds’ worth of new radio station, approved while already rusty steel skeletons in our cities tell of the extravagance and disorganisation that allows uncompleted public buildings to mock the passing taxpayer,” he continued. “ Seventy thousand pounds’ worth of new radio station approved while the country districts are crying out for a concentrated policy of rural housing, which has been an empty promise since 1935. “ Seventy thousand pounds” worth of new radio station, announced when the country has just entered war and Parliament has just closed with a promise, reluctantly extracted from the Government, that public expenditure will be reviewed in order to make the war burden for all sections of the community fall as light as possible. Time to Call a Halt “ The thinking people of this country have to call a halt to this,” said Mr Hamilton. “ This is not the time to talk of great spending of public money. If the Government has builders for whom jobs must be planned, then let us have first things first. Let up allow them to go direct into private building for the people of homes that the workers with larger families and wages of around £4 10s to £5 a week can afford to live in. “ I am making representations on behalf of people to-day who are driven to send their families into orphanages, who are being compelled to live with rising costs crushing their budgets because building for the people has been side-tracked by other less urgent work, because the economic structure has been so set out of gear that home-making is too dear for the average man and his family. I will never stand by and not make my vigorous protest, no matter what inconsiderate treatment it may receive at the hands of the Government. This is not a thing for other than straight speaking by public men.”