A CASE OF URGENCY.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 223, 20 September 1929, Page 6

A CASE OF URGENCY.

Yesterday the Labour Bills Committee reported to the House that it had considered Mr. Eraser's Unemployed Workers Bill, but had decided that it could not be proceeded with in its present form. However, the Committee added a recommendation to the Government to take action this session on the

lines of an Unemployed Insurance scheme; and this proposal naturally received vigorous support in the House from those members who regard unemployment not only as a question of national interest, but as a matter of grave and extreme urgency.

In our opinion, the Labour members who spoke on this report, and urged the Government to take immediate steps to meet the situation at once, were fully justified in their contentions, and Mr. Eraser can hardly be charged with exaggerating the pressing need for prompt action when he stated that "Parliament would be failing in its duty if it allowed the session to conclude without dealing with the question of unemployment insurance." It is no consolation to the thousands of men out of work, and the hundreds of families on the vergo of destitution to-day, that an. Unemployment Insurance Bill will be ready some time next year.

So far as Unemployment Insurance is concerned, it can hardly be argued that sufficient information on the subject is not available. We understand that material has already been compiled to enable the Government to prepare legislation on these lines. Then why not make a start with it at once? Surely Ministers are not consoling themselves with the assurance given by the Secretary of Labour yesterday, in his annual report, that "unemployment is much greater elsewhere than in the Dominion." It is cold comfort for workless workers here to know that many of the unemployed arc starving in the Old Country. So far as Auckland is concerned, its relatively large population, and tho natural drift of casual labour to the warmer climate of the North during the winter months may have helped to intensify tho sufferings of the unemployed here. But such demonstrations as took place in this city yesterday are a tragic proof of the extreme urgency of the situation, and on-the broad ground of public duty, to say nothing of the claims of humanity, it seems to us that the Government ought to formulate its proposals for relief without further delay.