The Auckland star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. MONDAY, MAY 26, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 122, 26 May 1930, Page 6

The Auckland star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

MONDAY, MAY 26, 1930. UNEMPLOYMENT RELIEF.

■i ■ ■ ■ For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tec can do. ——————■—B——^————l^l

The discussion on unemployment relief at the Charitable Aid Board meeting last week, to Avhich we drew attention at the time, has spread to other local bodies, with the result that borough lawyers are being consulted about the legality of expenditure, and a conference of local bodies may be held to protest against this burden being placed upon them. At Thursday's meeting of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce the extent of the levy on local bodies was deplored, and the question of taxation was referred to a Committee. All this should help to focus attention on the problem and to show the Government the need for a national policy. Lawyers may define "indigent" as they please. The governing fact is that whether a man out of work is "indigent" or merely "temporarily unemployed" he must be fed and clothed and housed, a fact that some critics of the report of the Committee on Unemployment overlook. In the meantime, Mr. W. D. Hunt, a member of the Unemployment Committee and, be it noted, a representative of the employers, has replied ably to criticisms of the report. There seems to be quite a widespread idea that the Committee proposes nothing more than a system of pay without work. As we have pointed out, this is quite erroneous. The main object of the proposed central Board, Mr. Hunt reminds the public, is to find work, and it will try to spread work over the year. If the Committee's proposals are properly carried out there will not be many sustentation payments without some return in labour, for these payments will only be made as a last resort. An unemployed person will not be entitled to such payments if there is work of any kind for him, and under the Committee's scheme the machinery for providing and allocating work will be improved. In reply to the objection that the recommendations mean increased taxation, Mr. Hunt replies that they do not. "All that is proposed is to alter the system of taxation, which, it is confidently expected, will result in more efficiency and decreased taxation on the whole." The Committee recommends that a national system of providing work and sustentation be provided, and though the details of the scheme may be open to criticism the broad lines laid down are sound. It is quite reasonable to suppose that there will be balanced against this special taxation, much if not all of what is now spent in unsatisfactory relief. The critics of the report have no alternative to offer. They dislike the suggestion that unemployment is a permanent condition, but they cannot point to any assurance that in the near future it will disappear. Even if the Committee's recommendations were carried out, and a wave of prosperity swept unemployment away, no harm would be done. The hard fact just now is that the country is drifting, and that the unemployment outlook grows steadily worse. ,