REHABILITATION

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 November 1944, Page 6

REHABILITATION

AUSTRALIAN-’ INVESTIGATION (Recd. 2.40 p.m.) SYDNEY, Nov. 7. The operation of. the New Zealand Government’s rehabilitation schemes for ex-servicemen will be studied by Mr. K, McLeod Bolton, Chairman of the Rehabilitation Committee of the New South Wales Returned Soldiers’ League. Mr. Bolton will fly to New. Zealand this week. His report will be presented to a conference of all returned bodies in New South Wales and industrial and ’ agricultural employers as well as workers’ representatives will attend. The policy hammered out by the conference will then be presented to the Commonwealth Government. “In New Zealand,” said Mr. Bolton “the Government realised the Returned Soldiers’ Association was the, most suitable body to deal with rehabilitation, and went into conference with it before evolving a policy for the Dominion. The same procedure could be adopted here.” Rehabilitation problems are, to-day, discussed editorially by the “Daily Telegraph.” The paper declares that the service authorities must make an intensive survey to ascertain the employment preferences of the 850,000 Australian servicemen, who will be seeking jobs after the war. It warns of the danger that post-war society will be crowded with misfits unless, this is done. Tens of thousands of men now in the Army were dead-end workers at the outbreak of the war, savs the paper, while others, who were in the middle of their apprenticeships, have also been taught new trades and inspired with new ambitions during the war. Many thousands will not desire to return to their old occupation and the problem of satisfying their occupational preferences and aptitudes should be faced now if the tragedy of the social misfit, so common after the last war, is to be averted. \..