N.Z. HOUSING

Grey River Argus, 18 August 1944, Page 4

N.Z. HOUSING

HON. R. SEMPLE’S REVIEW

State’s Lead Unequalled

Abroad

P.A. WELLINGTON, August 17. In the House to-night, in tne Budget debate, Hon. R. Semple, replied to Opposition criticism. He said that Laoour had done more to help industry than any other Government in the past. Since the present Government entered office, over orie thousand new factories had been established in the country, and these employed thirty thousand workers. The Member for Hamilton (Mr. F. Findlay, Nat.) had shed crocodile tears about lower paid railwaymen. Mr. Semple said he was not going to say that those men were receiving as much as they should, but this Government had done more for the railwaymen than had any previous Government. The cost of the restoration of their wages to the 1931 level, plus the cost of their forty-hour ween, amounted to £2,535,212 per year. Of this] amount the /proportion applicable to the First Division was £386,526, and that to the Second Division was £2,148,686. That did not cover all of the increase, because seven thousand of the railwaymen were in. the forces. The total of the concessions to the railwaymen since this Government came into office was £12,89,272. Out of this the Second Division had receiv ed the greater share. The average amount of the increase per man in the Second Division was approximately £lO7 per year, and in the First Division £9l 10s per year. If the railwaymen were starving now, —he did not know what the railwaymen were doing before Labour took office. An Opposition member: They say they were better off during the depression. Mr. Semple said that he admitted that there were anomalies in the service, but no living Minister could adjust them all. There was a tribunal sitting now to, adjust these anomalies. It ‘was the most democratic tribunal ever constituted in New Zealand, and there was a fair share of representation of the men on it. Therefore, thev had a voice in the creation of their own conditions. This tribunal was subject to stabilisation .as it must be if stabilisation were to continue.

N.Z. STATE HOUSING. Mr. Semple said that housing was in the mind of every man in the country. but no section had got any monopoly of sympathy for those needing homes. Housing was a world-wide problem, and New Zealand had done more to bridge the gap than an other country in the civilised world. The Government did not seek to eliminate private enterprise, but it was trying, like every Government in the world, to solve the housing problem. They had to bridge the gap between- the number of houses built by private enterprise and the number needed by the people. The Government had made’ a serious effort to do this, and, but for the war, there would be no housing problem in New Zealand to-day. In spite of immense difficulties twenty-five thousand, houses had been built in New Zealand during the war. This meant, on thb average family of four, that one hundred thousand people had been housed ddring the war. Half of these houses had been built by private enterprise, and the others by the State. Even for a 'State-built hours, the timber and tne other materials and the actual building were all furnished by private enterprise, which the Government did not seek to replace. The only individual whom the Government tried to stop was the unscrupulous rack-rent-er and the would-be slum builder. But the State had to take a hand m providing houses, since private enterprise had dismally failed on this question in every country of the world. Mr. Semple said that housing construction was now being speeded up. He invited the co-operation of the Opposition and of everyone in solving the' big problem of housing. Mr. Semple said that, during the war, building costs had risen by one hundred per cent, in Scotland and by forty per cent, in Australia, but only by twenty-six' per cent, in New Zealand. Nevertheless, apartment houses and other dwellings haa changed hands at increases in price of up to seventy-five per cent. Mr. Semole said that the Housing Department was experimenting m prefabricated concrete construction. The first contract, for twenty-six such houses, had just been let.