Ohu ‘a P.R. con job’

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 3

Ohu ‘a P.R. con job’

OLIVER RIDDELL

in Wellington

Plans announced by the Government last year to revive the ohu scheme have been described by the Labour Party as “no more than a public relations con job.”

Labour’s spokesman on employment, Mr Peter Neilson, said he had used Parliamentary questions and the Official Information Act to trace what work had been done to back up the heavily publicised proposals.

“I have received evasive and misleading answers and have been subject to a sort of bureaucratic shuttle service between departments,” he said. “It is clear that little or nothing has been done; an approach under the act and a series of questions also turned up nothing.”

The Government had secured the headlines when the proposal to revive the ohu scheme had been announced, but now had clearly lost interest, Mr Neilson said.

The scheme, under which alternative lifestyle communes were to be assisted

on to Crown land, was introduced by the last Labour Government, but was sidelined when National came to power in 1975. On the television programme, “Close Up,” last September, the Undersecretary of Internal Affairs, Mr Thompson, had said, “We could be looking (at) quite a few thousand (jobs).”

Mr Neilson said there was not the slightest sign of any of the jobs and the matter was typical of the Government’s cynical approach to unemployment — eager to publicise its professed concern but without effective answers.

The Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Highet, said no decision had been made on any allocation for the ohu scheme in 1984-85.

No-one had been appointed to prepare a feasibility study of re-establish-ing land use schemes similar to the ohu programme. It was clear, he said, that for a scheme similar to the ohu scheme to be implemented successfully a great deal of prior consultation and negotiation would be necessary.

The Internal Affairs De_-

partment had held a number of discussions with other Government departments, local bodies, community groups, and Federated Farmers. Once discussions ended, consideration would be given to the develop-

ment of new policy proposals. The Lands and Survey Department had prepared a report identifying the reasons for the limited success of the earlier ohu schemes, Mr Highet said.