WORK OF REAL VALUE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 67, 16 September 1943, Page 4

WORK OF REAL VALUE

Declaring that after the war there would 'be no lack of work in New i Zealand, the Labour candidate for I Wellington Suburbs, Mr. Combs, this week gave an outline of what Government Departments were preparing to spend. The Railway Department, for instance, was prepared to spend £10,000,000 on man-power and overhauling the system, and the Post and Telegraph Department £3,000,000 on telephone exchanges alone. Mr. Combs also mentioned prospective expenditure on hydro-electric schemes, on afforestation, and on housing. All these schemes can be expected to play a big part in the general post-war rehabilitation or reconstruction plan, but they are not in themselves sufficient. They will, as Mr. Combs .says, provide employment, but the mere provision of employment must not be the sole aim. There must be a more solid basis for rehabilitation than that. A farmer may suddenly decide to devote his whole attention to landscape gardening. By so doing he may uplift himself and those around him, and he may provide employment for a number of people, but in the result there would be an economic loss to ■ the country. To achieve its real purpose a rehabilitation plan must not only provide work; it must provide work that will be gainful to the country as a whole. The only sound basis of reconstruction is the production of goods that' can be used and sold and the provision of services that will be of real and lasting benefit to the country. Above all, there must be an avoidance of any suggestion that we can lay the foundations for true prosperity by taking in each other's washing. Export industries (mainly primary) must have attention. Hydro-electric power (quickly) and afforestation (more slowly) add to the real wealth of the country, but railways, telegraphs, and similar services increase production only indirectly by facilitating transport and communication. The war will end with much lost, ground to be caught up in these services, but if we go gaily spending millions we shall find that we are not helping, but hampering by cost burdens, real prosperity production.