The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1946. Immigration

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24986, 21 September 1946, Page 6

The Press SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 1946. Immigration

The Parliamentary Select Committee on Population, whose report was tabled yesterday, need not have sat in order to advise the Government that, if steps are not taken to form a long-term plan for immigration, New Zealand may find itself unable to get suitable immigrants. This has been obvious for a very long time, and it has been said over and over again, in these columns and elsewhere. In Britain and in Europe, those economic and political and, for that matter, purely .psychological factors which favour a country in need of immigrants are temporary, or are very likely to be. New Zealand House has been besieged by inquirers; they have been turned away with the information that there is no information to give them. Australia, having made in Britain and in Europe those very inquiries which the committee now recommends, decided an immigration policy and went ahead with it. Canada acted early. South Africa, as a message reports to-day, is “ speed- “ ing up immigration ”, considering the use of military camps as reception depots, considering the charter of ships, and - sending three commissions to Europe. But New Zealand, although immigration was set down as one of the questions to be studied by a committee of 0.N.D., the gorgeous Organ of Nothing Doing, has nothing done—except the report, at this • lamentably late date, of the select committee. That is not the committee’s fault, though more than nine months have passed since it was appointed; and it should be acknowledged that the committee has done well to insist on the need to move at once to a “ definite im- “ migration policy ”, based on “ in- “ vestigation on the spot, in England “and Northern Europe”. It is a need which, it is to be hoped, an early discussion in the House of Representatives will show to be generally recognised on both sides, and which the Government will not hesitate to meet. Though it is lamentably late to be taking such steps, it may not be too late.. If the Government does not see that it should, as the committee says, accelerate long-term plans which can be put into operation “at the earliest “ possible date consistent with the “supply of houses and the availability of transport”, it will add to the errors of delay the offence of a final and wilful refusal to act. At the same time, while the committee is to be credited with having made this point earnestly and well, it must be said that it appears to have allowed itself to be too heavily oppressed by the difficulties brought to its notice. In consequence, even in recommending a short-Yun and immediate policy of specialised immigration to fill industrial shortages, it has let caution rope down purpose and courage. “It may be " possible to oegin at a fairly early “ date with the immigration of “ single young men and women. ° carefully chosen ” because certain industries are hungry for the skills they have. If it is possible, then “ relatively small ” groups of such workers should be encouraged tn migrate. Unfortunately, the committee was “not in a position to “ state ” the numbers required, anti passes the question to the National Employment Service and the State departments in whose province lie the occupations specified—hospital nursing, domestic service, coal mining, sawmilling, and some branches of secondary industry. (It is odd that no specific reference seems to have been made to the building industry and its ancillaries.) There are other places where the committee pleads that it is not sufficiently informed fo propose a line of action, and the plea is a strange one after an inquiry extending over nine months. Whatever explains it—which wifi equally have to explain why the National Employment Service surveys have given the committee no help—the fact is that a recommendation so guarded by “ may ” and “ possible ” and “ fairly ” and “ relatively small ” and so dashed by confessions of ignorance on material facts and so dismal about obstacles and so bare of ideas to remove or reduce them —the fact is that such a recommendation is not much better than a ready-made set of excuses for another decision to do little or nothing now and pin everything to “long“term plans”—with the tide running against them. Yet the committee found and stated the compelling reason for bold, resourceful action now, bold enough to pursue selective immigration to the limit of calculated need, resourceful enough to attack and overcome the difficulties, when it dealt with the impact on the labour market, from 1947 to 1953, of the low birthrate between 1930 and 1936. The committee agreed that “ one solu“tion” would be immigration, bringing in drafts of workers for secondary industries, but “stressed “the difficulties of immigration at ‘ the present time ”. What other solution can there be, except selective regimentation of labour, of a sort which no New Zealand Government would dare to introduce in time of peace? Stressing difficulties always sounds very wise, but is, not seldom, just weak and timid; and that is what it is now.