PHYSICAL WELFARE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 121, 18 November 1943, Page 7

PHYSICAL WELFARE

GHURGHES' INTEREST

INTERVIEW'WITH MINISTER

Fears have been expressed that the Government's proposals for physical ana recreational facilities for the youth of New Zealand may amount to regimentation. A committee of the InterChurch Council on Public Affairs set up to confer with the Minister of Internal Affairs (Mr. Parry) on the subject has now reported and a statement has been prepared for circulation among the churches. The statement says that the Minister gave the most explicit assurance that the Department did not intend and never had intended to regiment youth in any shape or form, nor did it intend to centralise control of physical and recreational work. On the contrary, stated the Minister, I the Department was anxious that as far as possible the initiative be taken and the responsibility accepted by local centres. The Minister's idea, the statement. proceeds, was that money should be made available for loan to organisations desiring to provide facilities for physical welfare and recreation. If the Government eventually decided to vote money for this purpose, the Minister would recomment that suitable sums be lent to approved organisations (which would include Christian youth organisations free of interest. He believed in the principle of loans and not direct grants, as it was right and proper that people should be encouraged to help themselves. If, however, the money was lent free of interest, that would be a material help to the organisations in providing facilities and would also assure a constant stream of money being readily available for further loan purposes from the repayments. The Minister made it clear that the Government had not yet voted any money for this purpose, so the ideas he expressed must be regarded meantime as being his own and not committing the Government in any way. He intended, however, to use his best endeavours to persuade the Government to vote money for the purpose on these terms. The Minister said that there was nothing materialistic about the Department's aims. He spoke emphatically of the fundamental importance of the spiritual basis of all such work. He emphasised the point that the foundation on which his policy was based was service supplied by the State. TRAINING GROUPS. The committee assured the Minister that the Churches represented in the Inter-Church Council were in sympathy with the idea of making better provision for the physical and recreational activities of youth and that the Churches were willing to co-operate with the officers of the Department in this work. The officers of the Department had already placed their services at the disposal of inter-Church youth groups in some centres, and those services had been gratefully accepted. The committee cited as an example of the Department's willingness to cooperate with Church groups the work now being done at Lower Hutt, where' a group of 25 young women from the different churches had been formed into a leadership training class, and one of the Department's instructors was taking them through a course of 120 hours in physical and recreational work, with a view to fitting them to undertake similar courses in their own Church groups. The Inter-Church Council, which represents all the churches throughout the country, urges all Church youth organisations to take advantage of the facilities thus offered.