NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 50, 22 November 1930, Page 10

NOTES OF THE DAY

As an instance of the problems likely to engage the attention of the new Unemployment Board there was mentioned yesterday the case of a skilled mechanic who arrived from Australia by the last steamer from Sydney,’ accompanied by his wife and family, and who is now looking for work.- Our own necessity compels us io proceed upon the principle that charity begins at home, and accordingly make the provision of work for our own unemployed our first duty. There would-be less objection to immigrants descending upon the country in these-times if it could be shown that they possessed sufficient funds to enable them to. weather a period of unemployment. In Canada, however, restriction goes even fuither than that. Not only are individuals who have funds prohibited at present, but also those who have jobs awaiting them.

A good many home truths and much common sense were packed into a woman ratepayer’s letter (published this morning) to the Makara County Council. The burden of the letter,was that the tendency with local and national taxation is to mulct the thrifty for the benefit of the shiftless. That tendency has been widely noted in recent -years, not, unfortunately, because it is unjust and a reversal of the order of rewards and punishments, but because the process has now gone so far as to affect the welfare of the State. Excessive taxation is being blamed, even by some Socialists, as a root cause of unemployment because it diverts potential capital savings from reproductive into unreproductive channels, from the support of enterprise and expansipn to be dissipated on political makeshifts and palliatives. i. ■*♦ * *

In the annual banking review issued as a supplement to the well-known London financial journal, The Economist, readers will search in vain for any separate section devoted to New Zealand banking. Instead the Dominion is included in the Australian review and, apart from a table which includes the two New Zealand banks, New Zealand is hot mentioned at all, much less treater! as a separate financial entity. British people reading the review might be excused for supposing that Australia and New Zealand are one financial unit and that the problems and difficulties which are mentioned as facing Australian banks and the solutions adopted or suggested applied equally in the case of New Zealand. As everyone here knows, that is by no means the case but people in London might not so readily make the distinction. It will be a bad day for New Zealand if her credit is confused with that of Australia and thereby prejudiced.

It would appear from an interview with the Minister of Education that no definite steps have yet been taken to formulate a policy for legislative action in connection with the very urgent task of reorganising the education system. Mr. Atmore says that the Education Report is still before the country “for appraisal.” In another place the Otago High Schools Board suggests that a commission of qualified persons should be sent abroad to observe and report upon educational methods and developments in other countries. The country has had enough of commissions and reports, and the cost of them. From, the Reichel-Tate Commission on higher education, the Tate Commission on secondary education, and the adventurous band of Parliamentary amateurs which has reported, with recommendations upon the whole system from the primer classes to the university, there has been accumulated enough material to reorganise the system several times over. What the public now wants is a display of constructive statesmanship. If such a possibility were conceivable it would be a welcome change from the car-to-the-ground tactics which have been so conspicuous a feature of the present Government’s policy in various departments of administrative responsibility-