GENERAL ELECTION

Evening Post, Volume CXXXV, Issue 39, 16 February 1943, Page 3

GENERAL ELECTION

Minister "Half Expects" It

(P.A.) WHANGAREI. This Day.

Mr. Barclay, Minister of Agriculture, speaking at Hikiirangi last night, said he was half expecting a General Election this year. If the war continued as at present, he thought it would be a good idea to have an election.

wish to lose our identity by becoming liquidated in a Wellington firm. There is plenty of work to do in Dunedin, but we thought that by going north we were helping the Government to fulfil urgent and necessary undertak-

ings."' Another builder stated that he had found that the difficulty of securing a contract was so great that he had found it easier to fit his men into other contracting firms and shelve all hope of obtaining the contract which he had been led to understand would be available for him and his men. Contractors from other places were stated to have experienced similar treatment. "We were given to understand that all we had to do was to choose a job, but we found that we were not free from the Fletcher Construction Company or from the Commissioner of Defence Construction," said Mr. W. R. Williams, during a discussion on the subject at the Oamaru Borough Council. He alleged that the whole thing proved a gross misrepresentation to those Oamaru builders who had gone to Wellington in consequence of what they were told.

In commenting upon the matter, the chairman of the Defence Building Committee in Dunedin (Mr. W. H. Naylor) stated that there was a general feeling of uneasiness among builders who had been given to understand that contractors would be welcomed with their staffs in Wellington on account of the urgency of the work in the North Island. The position appeared to be that contractors themselves were not wanted unless they wished to become merely the employees of a Wellington firm.

"We have been misled in Dunedin," Mr. Naylor said. "We would not mind if our contractors retained charge of their men in Wellington. Some of the men have now returned, and they are generally not satisfied with the conditions and the promises made when there is so much work requiring to be done here."