EARLY SESSION.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 15, 19 January 1931, Page 10

EARLY SESSION.

LABOUR LEADER'S DEMAND.

UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM.

NEW RAILWAY POLICY CRITICISED.

(By Telegraph.—Press Association.)

WESTPOET, this day,

Addressing a week-end meeting of the West-port branch of the Labour party, Mr. H. E. Holland, M.P., leader of the Parliamentary Labour party, declared that, in view of the financial situation and the serious nature of the unemployment problem, it was imperative that Parliament be called together at the earliest possible moment after the return of the Prime Minister.

The Government, said Mr. Holland, had failed in the matter of finding work for those who were unemployed, and the Unemployment Board's policy was lackadaisical and inexcusable. It was beingpleaded that the board rermired time in which to get the machinery of its organisation into operation, but he pointed out that the present Government. I had had two years in which to frame its legislation" and prepare its regulations, and there was no good reason for any long delay in applying the scheme. Everyone would agree that both to the individual worker and the community as a whole the wages paid for work done was a far more satisfactory method than sustenance without work, but if work was not forthcoming sustenance must be made available without further delay. They could not afford to let women and children experience want and hunger when there was no shortage whatever of the necessaries of life in the Dominion. Funds Available? He pointed out that Parliament had made £1000,000 available to the board in order that there should be no unnecessary delay. The Minister's estimate of the annual income from the unemployment .levy was £500,000, and there was payable out of the Consolidated Fund an amount equal to one-half of the total amount of the board's expenditure, so that Willi £.100,000 from the levy the board could undertake a direct expenditure of at least £1.000.000, which was the amount estimated by the Unemployment Board as necessary to meet the financial needs arising out of the unemployment problem.

He described as both short-sighted and criminally callous tho refusal of certain local bodies and other concerns to provide work on a subsidised basis because of the 14/ minimum wage.

"Volte Thee Without Precedent." Referring to the stoppage of work on the Midland and East Coast railways, he said that a deliberate breach of the pledges given to.the electors in 1928 was involved, arid while it was open to any political party to review its programme the idea of a government jettisoning a substantial part of the policy on which' it secured the Treasury benches, and doing so without in any way consulting the electors, could not be tolerated. In this case the volte face was almost without precedent in the history of the Dominion. There had been an utter absence of any proper method of handling, the aituaion when the stoppage of work was decreed, and on both the East Coast and the Midland lines the maximum hardship had been inflicted upon men and their families. At the very least the men should.have been kept in work until the Government was ready to transfer them to other employment.

,Thc meeting , endorsed Mr. Holland's demand for a meeting of Parliament.