ON TEE INCREASE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 196, 19 August 1936, Page 10

ON TEE INCREASE?

UNEMPLOYED TOTAL.

OPPOSITION'S ALLEGATION. MINISTER'S SPIRITED REPLY. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. Whether the Government's policy of increasing wages had been responsible for an increase in the number of unemployed was discussed in the House of to-night when the estimates of the Labour Department were under consideration.

Opposition members alleged that unemployment was increasing, but the Minister of Labour, Mr. Armstrong, replied that there were more persons working now than at any time in the past six years, and that owing to the more liberal treatment of unemployed men had come on to the register who were debarred, under the previous administration.

The real reason for factories being so busy, said Mr. C. A. Wilkinson (Independent, Egmont) was that people were buying for the future because they were fiimly convinced that costs would rise.

Mr. W. J. Poison (National, Stratford) said that compared with an estimate received three months ago the cost of building a house was 20 per cent higher to-day; The automatic increase in" wages was closing businesses and placing more men on the unemployment fund.

The Minister of Labour said, that the increased number of men on sustenance was mainly due to more liberal administration of the Act. Men became eligible for sustenance who under the previous administration were debarred. Factories were working full time, and so were the workshops, and timber mills. Nearly every industry was going at full, speed, av.a "that only dated from the time the present Government took office. The victims of unemployment ware better fed, better housed and better paid and better tieated than under the previous Government, and under those conditions rcore r>pn had registered.