"INADEQUATE ACTION"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 33, 9 February 1943, Page 2

"INADEQUATE ACTION"

AIDING OF SERVICEMEN REHABILITATION ISSUE (0.c.) GISBORNE, this day. Strong criticism of the inadequate provision for the rehabilitation of exservicemen was expressed by Mr. G. B. Menzies, vice-president of the Wellington - East Coast executive committee of the R.S.A., when speaking at the Gisborne R.S.A. reunion. . "I have no time for politics or politicians," said Mr. Menzies, "but we will never get justice for all if there are two separate organisations. We must have only one. "What is being done for the returned men?" he asked. "We have the same politicians with the same promises as we had 25 years ago. If we as an organisation do not get something done, we are to blame. We of the executive are continually approaching Ministers of the CroWn to get something done, but we have never approached them with anything unfair. We hear quite a lot of what is going to be done, but' so little has been done that at the Hawke's Bay conference recently it was decided to write asking if the Rehabilitation Committee had gone into hibernation for the duration of the war. We have been fighting for practically 3 a years, and yet practically nothing has been done. Hawke's Bay has only put £38,000 aside for rehabilitation. In the last war it put £250,000 aside, and that was not enough." Mr. Menzies strongly criticised the action of the Government in putting sick returned men on the Social Security Fund. As for the political bargaining of whether the Second N.Z.E.F. should come back, he added, "I have never thought much of politics, but they are getting pretty low when they reach that stage. The Americans may as well say that, they will withdraw their forces from our own country."