UNEMPLOYMENT EMBROGLIO

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 98, 28 April 1931, Page 15

UNEMPLOYMENT EMBROGLIO

Writing of^the "unemployment imbroglio," Mr. L. D. Austin holds that recent reports show that a crisis is rapidly approaching, "for which the Government must shoulder the responsibility, since the obvious solution to the unemployment difficulty is so persistently ignored by the authorities. Labour leaders themselves, too cannot be absolved from all blame, because they are equally well informed concerning the plenitude of . work available in the Hawkes Bay district, yet the heads of all parties inexplicably refuse even to discuss the practicability of dispatching to the ruined area the thousands of men who would be only too willing to "o This is my third letter on the subTect: tho second one was sent by me to the-Prime Minister in person, but so tar he has not acknowledged it, nor has he given the least hint of having received it. . Meanwhile, Sir, we have the distressing spectacle of helpless, idle meu wandering round the city in their hundreds, storming wildly and fruitlessly at the gates of Parliament, which holds the key of the situntion in its hands, yet will not open the door." Mr. Austin quotes extracts from tho reports of deputations to the Minister of Labour, and asks why these did not refer to tho invaluable work that must be done sooner or later m Hawkes Bay, "and the sooner the bettei foi the unemployed. A fortnight has elapsed since this subject was first broached, and now Parliament is adjourning after naying steadily ignored the only possible method of Solving the unemployment problem."