The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1932. DUNEDIN POST OFFICE.

Evening Star, Issue 21147, 6 July 1932, Page 6

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JULY 6, 1932. DUNEDIN POST OFFICE.

The resentment of Dunedin citizens against the indefinite postponement of raising a superstructure on the elaborate foundations for the Post Office has only been smouldering. Now it is once more ablaze. Many causes have contributed. When the, calling of tenders was cancelled it was pleaded that the Treasury was virtually empty and that heavy oversea commitments had to be met somehow- The inevitable was accepted with as good a grace as possible. Since then there has. been heavy unemployment taxation and the development of fresh schemes to provide work for the unemployed. To a great many taxpayers recent payments to the Government have been in the nature of a capital levy. They have had to trench on savings or to realise or borrow on property of one kind or another to pay the demands. Consequently they become critical of the way the money is spent. If capital has to be eaten into they incline to the view that there should be something lasting to show for it. The impermanence of much of the work, particularly under No. 5 scheme, which, until recently at least, has absorbed 85 per cent, of the Government’s unemployment relief expenditure, has been criticised as frequently and as severely as its often perfunctory performance. It is no secret that some of the relief workers regard it as the equivalent of the dole. Tills week in our correspondence columns the general secretary of the New Zealand Workers' Union analysed the Government’s policy of closing down developmental works and substituting others, and most people will agree with many of his contentions. No. 5 scheme has been described by a New Zealand contributor to the May issue of the ‘ Economic Record ’ us “ largely an attempt to make work for work’s sake, to absorb undifferentiated human labour in work that could far bettor bo executed by machines.” His conclusion is that “ New Zealand has not begun to crack the nut of unemployment. ’ ’ The futility of the purposes for which competent men have been engaged has indeed been a blot on our system. Latterly the Government seems to have been seized of the defect and been trying to do something to remedy it. But it might do much more. No branch of industry has suffered more in the depression than the building and allied trades. The Government has accentuated this by calling a halt in its own building operations, but has instituted as a set-off a fund to subsidise wages in those trades. The intention is doubtless good, and the hoped for stimulus to building may outweigh anomalies which seem inevitable. But would not at least an equal stimulus bo given if the Government were to emerge from its retreat, persevere with a wcll-choscn modification of its own programme, create sumo activity iu the building trade, and perhaps sot an example which private enterprise might follow? The plea of lack of funds is not accepted by the public as readily as six months ago. TLe Government itself has t

encouraged scepticism on this head hy doing tentatively in other centres what Dunedin citizens urge should be done here also. Certain public buildings are to be gone on with in Wellington and Christchurch. Is either of them so urgent or so overdue as the Dunedin Post Office? The Government flew from one extreme to another. After the completion of the palatial Auckland Railway Station plans for the Dunedin Post Office were finalised, and here again the designer’s lavish hand suggested an overflowing Treasury or unlimited credit. Suddenly the Government took fright. It may be that it is gradually regaining confidence; but, if so, symptoms of that arc not to be displayed in Dunedin. Preparations are being made so that a valuable central site, on which great expenditure has already been incurred, shall idle through an indeterminate cycle of years witji a less repulsive and disconsolate exterior appearance than hitherto. This has undoubtedly tended to confirm the worst fears of the public, and has exasperated them to a remarkable degree. To-day it is not only the ultra-credulous who believe the Public Works Department capable of doing what a rumour of some months date suggested—viz., covering over the site and grassing it. There is now every indication of a determined united campaign on Dunedin’s part to try and make the Government see the distinction between wise spending and, foolish, between wise saving and foolish. It may be unfortunate that the Minister from whom this city might have expected most help in this matter, but has received least, is absent from the dominion; but personal considerations must be subordinated to public needs and public rights. In support of our contentions we refer readers to a speech, reproduced elsewhere in our columns, analysing a somewhat similar situation which arose in England. The injury done there by flying from one extreme to another is temperately set forth by a prominent member of the building trade.