The Press MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943. Immigration

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24021, 9 August 1943, Page 4

The Press MONDAY, AUGUST 9, 1943. Immigration

Speaking in the south last week, Mr M. Moohan. chairman of the Rehabilitation Board, referred to ways in which New Zealand could gratefully requite the help received from Great Britain during the war. Inter alia, Mr Moohan suggested, New Zealand can and should offer to receive British immigrants. It has long been suspected that the present Government's pre-war reluctance to do anything, or even say anything, about immigration reflected the attitude of the trade unions, which thought more of preserving jobs than of creating employment; and Mr Moohan's suggestion, which clearly to his mind represents a generous concession in policy, betrays this attitude. But it betrays more than that. It betrays an entire misconception both of Britain's position and of New Zealand's, as both will face the post-war years. Mr Moohan's grateful " offer" implies on the one hand that Britain will have surplus population, and on the other that New Zealand will help Britain (rather than herself) by receiving some of this surplus. These are gross and dangerous errors; and the fact that the chairman of the board adopts them is, of course, consistent with the obvious tendency in rehabilitation policy to think of avoiding unemployment rather than' of organising full employment. The truth is that Britain is threatened by a population fall, and that New Zealand's net reproduction rate is barely sufficient to maintain present population figures. Both, in different degrees, already see the ominous phenomenon of the higher age groups proportionately rising and the lower age groups declining in the population. This means, for Great Britain urgently and for NewZealand only less urgently, that the burdens of the future, in production, in tax-paying, in maintaining the standard of living, in fulfilling the national aims of social service, are going to fall on fewer shoulders. And this, moreover, is the prospect when the demand for labour, productive energy, youth, will be insistent through years of repayment, repair, reconstruction, and advance. To think any other way is sheer defeatism. During a House of Lords debate in May, Lord Bledisloe quoted a Minister of the Crown, who, when a New Zealand Minister said he "hoped Britain " was going to send New Zealand "some useful -migrants after the "war," replied that he "had grave " doubts whether Britain would be " able to spare any young nationals " when the war was over." His doubts are manifestly well justified. Lord Cranborne, who spoke for the Government in this debate, said, however, that if British servicemen after the war felt "the spirit of " adventure and wanted to try new " openings" in the Dominions, the Government would " put no hind- " ranee in their way but would give "them every assistance." Helpful as this oiler is, its limits are explicit and its effect may be very slight. Opportunity, always the prime mover in large migrations, ceased to have much influence well before the war. After the war, it is at least as likely to say Stay as Go. It is not in this direction that the New Zealand Government can look for the sure foundations, or probable or even possible foundations, of an immigration policy such as will substantially serve the Dominion's need for a much greater population. But what the Government's policy is remains unknown. When its principles are declared—and that should be soon—it is to .be hoped that they do not disclose the fallacies of Mr Moohan's.