LABOUR AND HOUSING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 116, 18 May 1944, Page 3

LABOUR AND HOUSING

"ELECTION TEARS" "No level-headed voter will be duped by my opponent's shedding of 'electioij tears' over the slum areas," said Mri W. Appleton, Citizens' candidate for ths Mayoralty at Kliandallah and. North* land last night. "He declares the pro* blem to be 40 years old, ignoring that without old houses there is no slum problem. But what has he been doing all this time? It has taken the prospect of another £750 a year to bring him into the £2000 a year class to stimulate his interest in slums, buses, trams, tracks, tepid baths, roads, and the like." Why did Mr. Roberts not offer his services as a councillor years ago to give his advice and publicise his still undisclosed remedy for the slum problem? Perhaps_ the answer was that he did not believe in honorary community service. Now he blossomed forth wanting to pin notices of owners' names on slum houses. Would they not have carried as much weight years agq under his signature as president of tha New Zealand Labour Party? For years at the Trades Hall he had the slum problem all round him, but no interest then. He had better fish to fry. When the Labour Government wag in its heyday of State house building did Mr. Roberts wave his big. stick ai them and say "No State houses to anyj one till these slum dwellers are accom modated?" Not him! But the berated Citizens' Council did press the Labour Government for 3 Slum Clearance Bill, without success and anyone without Mr. Roberts's col] ossal ignorance of civic affaire knew iht council to be powerless without legis lative authority. The Coates Govern ment knew that when, in its dyinj stages, it empowered, by Act, the hou^ ing surveys. The present Governmen after nine years had still to give th< finishing touches to this legislation bj bringing down a Slum Clearance BUM