The Press SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1943. Populate or Perish

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24074, 9 October 1943, Page 4

The Press SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1943. Populate or Perish

One of the primary-issues of reconstruction, overlooked or underrated during the General Election campaign, is that of population. New Zealand’s million and a half are at least a million and a half too few for the tasks and burdens in sight; but neither the Government nor the National Party has yet concentrated on policies calculated to stimulate and maintain rapid increase. Neither,has totally ignored them. Both, however, have rejected or indefinitely deferred action in one of the two possible directions; both prefer to let immigration stand over till the problem', of ‘putting every man back into civil employment is. solved. This is a 'shortsighted preference. Both parties, also, though they offered the electorate measures which may tend to ease the economic deterrents against large families, failed to show that they had attempted to see the problem of the birth-rate as a whole, to deal with it comprehensively, or to inform themselves upon current investigations into the causes of low birth-rates and the means of modifying those causes. This means, unfortunately, that they were not giving the problem the kind of attention it deserves. The Government’s major contribution, for example, was a still unexplained proposal to put the wage system on a basis of family need; the National Party’s, tax reductions and other economic relief, on a scale intended to redress inequitable pressure on the family budget. The working of this - device, also, was only sketchily explained. It must be said that the population problem in all its aspects, those of early marriage and parenthood, family subvention, education, health, ,and security, for example, will have to be attacked more systematically and more boldly. The beginning is to try to master the wide ground of evidence, material and theoretical; and the regrettable truth is that New Zealand has not begun. It is a more regrettable truth that New Zealand’s political leadership appears not to have realised that it is necessary to begin. Of all political errors to which New Zealand political leadership is prone, this, the error of superficiality, is the worst. It ignores the need to develop social action from fundamental research and to develop it connectedly. It produces unprepared and partial and therefore faulty action. It takes parts of the problem for the whole and gets them out of proportion. It rushes at simple solutions which are only sources of new mischief. If the Government’s promise to tackle the major problems of reconstruction was earnestly made, it should now be possible to hope that the population problem will be earnestly worked at, and the guesses and half-measures of the superficial tradition resolutely rejected. The work is urgent; but before that hope can be trusted, the Government will have to prove, by taking preliminary steps in the right direction, that it understood its own promise and was sincere in it. One distinction is necessary. An increase in the birthrate will take years- to expand the age-groups upon which future responsibility, in production and reproduction, will fall. The search for the measures to give this longrange result should not be delayed because it can only be a long-range result. But immigration, which is one of them, or can and should be planned as one of them, is also a measure that gives immediate results. Their order and value will depend on the success with which schemes are adapted to conditions oversea and in New Zealand; but the foundations of any successful scheme will have to be laid soon. The Government will give one clear indication of being in earnest by setting to work on them. “ Populate “or perish the alternative was put to Australian readers by Professor Clunies Ross, in a letter to the “Sydney Morning Herald,” reprinted in another column this morning. The New Zealand people and the New Zealand Government face the same alternative.