Lay-offs ahead, says builder ‘Do something’ Govt told

Press, 31 May 1977, Page 2

Lay-offs ahead, says builder ‘Do something’ Govt told

PA Wellington'' |1 Large-scale dismissals are;l looming in the building in-|i dustry, according to the i president of the Master ; Builders Federation (Mr ;< Frank Cree). The sackings would occur H in the next three months I; unless the Government in-|l creased the availability of, mortgage finance “in the ex-|l tremeiy near future,” Mr,Cree said yesterday. i "A large number of peopled

■who have had applications, Ifor first mortgages from the -Housing Corporation now) ■ find that they cannot get, 'second mortgage finance.' and are withdrawing from .contracts,” he said. Unless action was taken,, [the Government would not (achieve its housing construe- j it ion target for this year, and ) there would be "all sorts of j firms getting to the point j iwhere they have absolutely) nothing to do, and will have i to dismiss peonle."

i The crucial period would be June, July, and August, j "It takes three months to I affect the system so we are ‘pushing them to move now,” said Mr Cree. He agreed with a state- | mer>t by the president of the federation’s Auckland branch i(Mr G. Lawton) that the 'amount of forward building work had fallen 40 per cent ■in the last year although he •said, work in some farming • centres had been kept up by high farmer incomes. But this farming building boom was now coming to an end. said Mr Cree. Already things were particularly bad in Taranaki, and the Government had agreed to release new Government work there. The Minister of Housing (Mr Holland) had a team working on the mortgage problems, he said, and he had met the Minister last week to tell how much the situation had deteriorated in the last two months. Mr Cree said that immigration figures showed that New Zealand had lost 800 to 1000 tradesmen in the last year.

"If the Government does not do something to stop the

deterioration, then when the economy does start to move again we will find ourselves without the necessary tradesmen.

"We are back now where we were in the bad period in 1967. And if they don’t do something now, it will get worse.”

He confirmed a statement by another Auckland builder, M” Ken Williams, that the cost of building a minimumstandard "modai” house rose 14.6 per cent last year, and another 8.5 per cent in the first four months of this year.

In Hamilton yesterday, the Social Credit leader (Mr Bruce Beetham) called on the Government to introduce the low-interest loans it promised during the Election campaign. The Prime Minister made the promise in an off-the-cuff statement during his campaign, he said. “With mass building layoffs looming, and an estimated 28 per cent rise in the cost of new houses this year, low-interest loans are needed to help ease the problems of purchase/’ Mr Beetham said.