WORKMEN FROM AUSTRALIA

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22656, 10 March 1939, Page 15

WORKMEN FROM AUSTRALIA

TO THE EDITOR OF THE PRESS Sir, —It is high time the public of New Zealand awoke to the Government’s policy of loosing the riff-raff of the large Australian cities on our labour system. Anyone who has visited Sydney and the other states recently knows that the building and allied trades are flourishing there. It stands to reason that the men finding easy access to New Zealand are only the malcontents from these trades. Having secured work here, they start agitating and stirring up strife. Today the unions are working Australians into the freezing works, waterside, and Government workshops, while dozens of our men are quietly being sacked off public works. Young New Zealanders wlno Vvave Ivied to secure work in Australia know the cool and often hostile receptions handed out to Pig Islanders and Old Country men—ltalians and Southern Europeans being preferred. There is no doubt these men from across the Tasman will make the already harassed employers’ position increasingly more difficult in the near future. —Yours, etc.,

WIDE-AWAKE NEW ZEALANDER, March 9, 1939.