Immigration

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25953, 5 November 1949, Page 6

Immigration

Few will doubt Mr Semple’s sincerity when he says, as he did at Otahuhu on Thursday evening, that he would like to. see New Zealand “developed and populated” so that within a few years it will have a population of 5,000,000. As Minister of Works, Mr Semple has run more sharply against the facts of population than any other member of the Government. His own departments are clamouring for men to staff the development works on which the future cff the country largely depends; and although the labour shortage has become increasingly embarrassing since the end of the war, immigrants are still coming tc the country in no more than a thin trickle. The Labour Party’s election policy declares, with serene disregard of the facts, that “ Labour’s balanced works programme for the next few years “ will increase the productive capacity of New Zealand to the limit “of the manpower available ”, and that “immigration will assist in the “ rapid expansion of public works ”. The Government’s own departmental reports testify to the serious unbalance of the works programme, which will not be corrected “ within “a few years”, and to the unexpected difficulty that has been met in securing suitable immigrants. Years after other Dominions and other countries had taken the pick of the world’s migration pools, New Zealand began to look for active, unencumbered men and women, in a very restricted range of occupations, who might relieve the worst labour shortages here without adding to the country’s housing troubles. New Zealand, of course, was too late. The Department of Labour ,is hopeful that things will improve “when “ the shortage of accommodation in “ New Zealand is overtaken ” and the immigration scheme can be extended to married men with families. By that time most of the families that New Zealand wants will have made their homes in Australia, Canada, or elsewhere; and New Zealand will again be left lamenting. Few things are likely to affect the future of this country more profoundly than the Government’s short-sighted policy on immigration.