REHABILITATION IN AUSTRALIA

Dominion, Volume 38, Issue 81, 30 December 1944, Page 7

REHABILITATION IN AUSTRALIA

N.Z. Example Stressed (By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Special Correspondent.) (Received December 29, 7.20 p.m.) _ SYDNEY, December 29. New Zealand’s rehabilitation plans will be featured in discussions at a conference in Sydney this month, when delegates from all organizations concerned with the re-establishment of service men and women in civilian, life will meet. The Employers’ Federation, Chamber of Manufacturers, agricultural bodies, trades unions, and ex-servicemen’s organizations will be represented. What New Zealand is doing for the returned soldier has been widely publicized here by Mr. K. McLeod Bolton, chairman of the rehabilitation committee of the New South Wales branch of the Returned Soldiers’ League, who recently made a visit of investigation to the Dominion. “Repatriation, rehabilitation. vocational training, and returned soldier preference really mean something iu New Zealand,” he says, writing in the “Sydney Morning Herald.” “Compared with wliat the New Zealand Government has done for its returned soldiers already, Australia has merely been toying with the question. The Dominion has enacted the most comprehensive and generous Rehabilitation Act in the British Commonwealth. It is really getting something done, and is not counting the cost. Right from the discharge of a service man or woman, when from £lO to £2i> mufti allowance is given, compared with the much smaller amount allowed to our people; through a generous system of loans up to £4500 for dairy farms. £6OOO for sheep farms, supplementary loans for equipment, and the like; to housing, training, and every other angle of rehabilitation. New Zealand is so far ahead of Australia that she is practically o»t of sight.” Mr. Bolton lists New Zealand’s "spectacular achievements” in rehabilitation, compared with what has been done in Australia. He stresses that in New Zealand preference to the returned soldier is regarded as the ex-serviceman's right, and is not a controversial subject as in Australia, He also cites instances of New Zealand co-operation between unionists and ex-soldier trainees, contrasting this with the position in Australia, where some unions have shown themselves unwilling to assist in rehabilitation schemes. Mr. Bolton also compares New, Zealand’s rehabilitation principle of "reward for meritorious service” with Australia’s War Cabinet minute ou post-war reconstruct ion, which states specifically that “any benefits are sot to be regarded as a reward for service.” t Summing up. he says that New Zealand leads Australia in returned soldier preference, land settlement, business reestablishment. trade training, and housing, and declares: "Australia has a much bigger rehabilitation job to do than New Zealand, and it is lime we really got ou with it.” ■ ’ .