The Press TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1942. Rehabilitation in The Doldrums

Press, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 23695, 21 July 1942, Page 4

The Press TUESDAY, JULY 21, 1942. Rehabilitation in The Doldrums

It is strange that in the reconstruction of war government in New Zealand the party leaders, although hard put to it to invent portfolios for all Ministers, did not find it worth while to make post-war rehabilitation the sol*e concern of one Minister. There is a widespread and probably accurate impression that rehabilitation has been left in a backwater and that, unless it can be brought back into the main stream of government, the end of this war will find the country as disastrously unprepared to deal with the social and economic problem of rehabilitation as it was at the end of last war. The Rehabilitation Act of 1941, described in its preamble as “ an act to make provision for the “ re-establishment in civil life of “ persons who have served with His “ Majesty’s Armed Forces, for the “ reconstitution of war-time indus- “ tries on a peace-time basis, and for “ matters incidental thereto,” was sound though limited in conception. It provided for the establishmerit of a . Rehabilitation Council to advise the appropriate Minister and of a smaller Rehabilitation Board with executive powers to carry out such projects as are necessary to establish men from the services in civil life. In practice, this machinery has been made ineffective by an unwise choice of personnel. The Rehabilitation Council has sunk into impotence because it has far too many members—2o including the Minister—and because the great majority of these members represent sectional economic interests. On committees of this sort, representation of interests almost invariably prevents the formulation of clear-cut and comprehensive policies. The Rehabilitation Board, which has six members, is a less unwieldy body and is less encumbered by sectional representation. But it has two serious weaknesses. The first is that the act makes it “ subject in all things to “ the control of the Minister.” The second is that those of its members who have any special qualifications for their task already have such heavy demands on their time that they cannot give much attention to the board’s work. The position seems to be that no one in the Ministry or the public service is able to give a whole mind to the problems of rehabilitation. Apart, however, from these defects of administrative machinery, it is clear that the Government’s whole approach to rehabilitation is too narrow. To concentrate, as the board seems to be doing, on the task of finding work for men from the fighting services is to invite failure even in that single task. The war is producing profound changes in the whole structure of New Zealand’s economic life; and the problem of readjusting industry to the needs of peace and reabsorbing returning men into industry will not be solved satisfactorily unless it is regarded as a problem, of large-scale economic planning. This has been the approach in Britain, where rehabilitation is regarded as one aspect of post-war reconstruction and planning. In the recent reconstruction of the British Government Sir William Jowitt took over the responsi-r bility. for devising plans for social and economic betterment and has within his purview education, the social services, and industrial and agricultural reorganisation. That part of planning which depends on the use of land comes within the scope of the new Ministry of Works and Planning under Lord Portal. The New Zealand Government’s approach to rehabilitation is also weakened by the assumption that the whole matter is something to be dealt with when the war ends and that, therefore it is sufficient to draw up plans and pigeonhole them against the day when peace is declared. That assumption is at best only partly true. If the industrial transition from war to peace is to be smooth, there will be many matters in which action is necessary long before the war is ended. The British Government, for instance, has already made public the main principles of its policy for post-war land utilisation and has taken some steps to put those principles into force. These steps include, a wide extension of the Government’s powers to acquire land and a declaration that compensation for land acquired will not be paid at a rate in excess of the land values ruling immediately before the outbreak of war. It is easy enough to suggest the administrative and legislative steps which ought to be taken in New Zealand to ensure that rehabilitation gets the attention it deserves. In the first place, the Rehabilitation Council and the Rehabilitation Board ought to be brought to life by paring away the dead wood in their membership and by bringing in at least some men and women of first-rate ability who can give their whole time to the work and who can be sure of getting all the expert advice and assistance they may require. In the second place, the Rehabilitation Act should be amended to put rehabilitation in,to its proper setting as part of the wider problem of planning and reconstruction. But in themselves neither of these changes will avail much unless accompanied by a keener realisation by the Government as a whole of the urgent need to begin now to plan New Zealand’s economic development, in the light of the economic changes which the war is bringing about in the world. It is not enough to have one board or department concerning itself, however whole-heartedly and energetically, with post-war development; there is, indeed, a very real danger that by this means the whole subject will become segregated and sterilised, as it was in Britain after the last war by the establishment of a Ministry of Reconstruction. As the “ Economist ” has pointed out, after this war “ all the departments “will be, or ought to be, Ministries “of

construction is a policy for a government and not a job for some particular administrative agency. The difficulty in New Zealand is that the precarious balance of parties on which the present system of war government is based makes it almost impossible to get decisions on the fundamental social and economic issues which are raised once there is any serious thinking about reconstruction.