The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1943. REHABILITATION AND DISTRICT DEVELOPMENT.

Grey River Argus, 20 January 1943, Page 4

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, January 20, 1943. REHABILITATION AND DISTRICT DEVELOPMENT.

Aii approach, though it may only prove a tentative one, to the coining great task of post-war rehabilitation, is the Government’s request for the co-operation of local bodies. A series of conferences is being called throughout the Dominion, so that recommendations may be obtained from those in the closent touch with conditions and possibilities in the various towns and districts. It is to be hoped that those responsible for framing such recommendations will take large rather than narrow views. That local bodies ahe able to devise works on which many men may be placed was shown during the depression, but experience has equally shown since then that too many of those works were of a short-sighted and indeed transient kind affording little lasting benefit, and certainly nowise reproductive in their results. When a neighbouring municipal body this week considered the matter a member prudently pointed cut the opportunity afforded of considering the industrial picture of the district, especially in the. light of the fact that sawmilling and gold mining, which still afford inucn employment and revenue are likely m another generation to have undergone a very great decline. Pastoral production alone is not Calculated to maintain even the present population, and for as many as it does maintain on a wages basis will not afford spending power comparable to that obtainable from the other industries mentioned- On its part, the Government cannot ignore the need for perserving as even a distribution as possible of population. Australia is an example of the evil due an uneven distribution, because it is much harder to cure the evil now that the great majority are herded in a. few coastal centres, than it would have been to prevent the evil when it was comparatively small. Big city interests are worse than blind to it. We have in New Zealand before the war had the spectacle of main North Island ! centres attempting to stifle the i shipping trade of smaller towns I on the score of an economy calculated to benefit, not this coun- ; try, but interests oversea. In I any case cities beyond a couple i of hundred thousand in population ! become inevitably slum breeders Im some shape or form, and also 'sinks for population, because they | need increments from areas with higher birthrates, failing to. main--1 lain their own. We have yet in New Zealand scarcely a city that iis too big, but the trend is to 1 make them rapidly bigger and to j denude the rural areas. Decentralisation in secondary industry and in economic distribution already is definitely called for in the Dominion. The war, moreover. has accelerated the trend to j the North stand, and especially 'to its two main centres. -To correct this by anticipation dictates a new policy of industrial development. The Government does undoubtedly possess initiative to the extent that it can define areas where new industries should be I launched and areas where they j would bo either superfluous or

calculated to increase congestion. More centres with population from ten to fifty thousand are far preferable to four great cities with “the rest nowhere.’ If, however, the state has powers they are as much negative as oositive. and each particular, coni ’ muni tv must itself take positive action. Ils people should invest within their own area. What are the Went Coast possibilities? One guide might be industrial developments elsewhere such industries supplying this area with commodities that could here be manufactured quite as economically. ■ There also arc local raw materials that could be utilised, such .as coal, timber, and other substances- Paper production in some forms ought to be feasible, provided there were adequate capital, as there is no end of raw material. Pastoral products could be processed to a greater extent. There is labour for some industries that at present are rather short of labour in other districts. Admittedly these are technical matters, and call for ex-

pert judgment, which is what ought to be sought, out and canvassed. Fish and meat packing, boot and tile manufacture, and other secondary industries might be considered, and ;also a revival of some industries which used locally to thrive, but against which improved railway transport has largely operated in favour of the same industries elsewhere. It will be a better outlook for . returned servicemen if there is a permanent form of occupation offering after the Avar than the type of works devised for state or municipal objects only, which usually arc only temporary. Thus in now calculating the future, the most stable factor locally is that of pastrol production, whereas it should have as its complement here secondary industry adequate to cope with stable local consumption of (at least some commodities. 11 is. of course, easier to point out the value of such development than the means to bring it about, but the rehabilitation question ought to be viewed in the light of revealing those means. ________