MELBOURNE UNEMPLOYED.

Auckland Star, Volume XXI, Issue 172, 24 July 1890, Page 2

MELBOURNE UNEMPLOYED.

The unemployed question occupied a considerabla portion of the sitting of the Melbourne Legislative Council last week. The Minister for Justice, in reply to a question, said the Government did not intend to start relief work for the unemployed. Thereupon Mr Melville moved thab the Government, in view of che pressing demand made by large bodies of working men, should provide temporary work for all willing to work. After a long debate Mr Melville withdrew the motion, when a collection was made amongst the members and £402 subscribed, to be handed to bhe Salvation Army authorities for alleviating the distress of the unemployed. In the Assembly later in the evening Sir Bryan O'Loghlen again agitated in favour of the Government starting relief works, but Mr Patterson (Minister for Public Works) strenuously opposed the proposal. The Government, he said, recognised that those really in want of work should get it and they were pushing on public works, but they declined to play into the hands of tho agitators by establishing relief works to encourage a state of things thab would bring aboub the pauperisation of the colony. The matter then dropped.