SHOULD RESIGN.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 11, 13 January 1934, Page 10

SHOULD RESIGN.

GOVERNMENT ASSAILED. ALTERNATIVE POLICY WANTED. Condemning the new sustenance policy, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr. M. J. Savage, claims that unless the Government is prepared to adopt an alternative course regarding unemployment relief generally, it should resign. "It is probably not fair to blame the Unemployment Board for the hopeless position of the 78,000 men who are registered as unemployed, and who, from time to time have been provided with relief work," said Mr. Savage to-day. "Members of the board must be at their wits' end to know how they are to provide even an existence for the army of people who are expected to live on their share of the unemployment fund. The total amounted expected to be collected for the current year is estimated at £4,300,000, which at most will work out at £55 per registered worker per annum—about £1 1/2 per week.

"The latest proposal to pay sustenance without work in certain cases is no doubt due to a desire on the part of the board to make the fund go as far as possible; but the Government that looks on at such a proposal, and has nothing better to offer only shows its complete bankruptcy of ideas.

"Married men of 50 years of age and under 60 may elect to take sustenance not exceeding 26/ per week without work. Other relief workers who are 50 years of age or over, and who are physically unfit for the work offering, may apply to be paid sustenance. Single men are to get 10/ per week; married men 17/6 per week, plus 2/ for each dependent child under the age of 16. years; but in no case exceeding 26/ per week. That means that a man and wife must pay rent and live upon 7/6 per week; a man, wife and child up to 16 years of age must live on 19/6, while a man and wife with two children will receive 21/6 per week, which is less than is now being paid on relief work to a married man without children.

"The board says the scheme is to be on a voluntary basis, but if work is not offering, the relief worker must accept sustenance or face immediate starvation. There is no other alternative. Men of the age of 60 and over, whose wives are in receipt of a pension, will be compelled to accept sustenance at the rate of 15/ per week, plus 2/ for each child under the ago of 10. The total payment is not to exceed 20/ per week.

The whole system of unemployment relief is uneconomic, degrading, and deplorable in the extreme. In the first place men are called upon to pay a tax, and eome who are in arrears with their payments have to meet penalty payments as well, in order to qualify for the beggarly pittance that is paid to them. Their families are compelled to live on short rations and go- about in rags, or wear other people's left off clothing. The people have reached the end of their patience. There is an alternative course ■ which the Government should follow, or resign."