MONEY ILL-SPENT

Hawera Star, Volume L, 10 September 1930, Page 4

MONEY ILL-SPENT

When the present Government agreed to send a delegation to the International Labour Conference at Geneva, many people wondered why there should bo this departure from the policy of the former Government. The cost of sending such a delegation abroad runs into several thousands, and the Reform administration had, in its day, refused to countenance such expenditure. However, times have changed and the Gov- , ernnient of the day apparently found it politic to listen to the wishes of the Labour Party on the subject. The delegation has now returned and from the lips of Professor Tocker we learn, inferentially, just ho-w little value New

Zealand can expect from this expenditure, now, or in the future. Professor Tocher said that New Zealand was not directly concerned in the discussions. "Samoan labour was excluded in the scope of the forced labour question, and the salaried workers’ convention was an attempt to gain for European workers what was given to New Zealand workers in the Shops and Offices Act more than thirty years ago,” lie said. "The conference is concerned mainly with European conditions, consequently any measure of protection given to labour by European legislation or any convention of the conference likely to bo ratified by European countries is, generally speaking, far behind that already given in Australia and New Zealand. 1 Moreover, conditions of production, standards of living, and customs of peoples differ so widely that standardisation of labour conditions, at which the conference appears to aim, seems attainable to only a very small extent.” Apparently the only result gained from New Zealand’s participation has been the gratification of the vanity of the Now Zealand Labour Party —at the expense of the general taxpayer.