OTTAWA CONFERENCE.

Hawera Star, Volume LI, 24 May 1932, Page 4

OTTAWA CONFERENCE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —Be the Ottawa Conference, which is occupying the Government minds to the exclusion of unemployed and the interests of the Dominion. I am going to ask some pertinent questions, Air Editor and readers of this article: The delegates who think they ■ are going to spend, let us say, between £SOOO or anything up to £16,000 of the unemployed or returned soldiers ’ settle- ■ meat reserve money have not yet told - us what they are going to ask off the other parts of the Empire or what they are going to give in exchange. I am sorry to see such rioting which has taken place in this country; it can only recoil on the ones who get out of hand, and on some poor shopkeeper who is in, perhaps, as bad a position as the unemployed —he could not be worse. There are some poor chaps in prison who went out without any evil intentions, but, X say, in all seriousness, we should not allow these delegates to leave this country until they say. what they are going for. What can we expect? Someone said they were going to ask Ts 3d for butter, which is absurd. Mr Poison, AI.P., says a quota, whatever he means by that. Someone on the Aleat Board says there must not be a quota, so the sooner the people have orderly meetings and act constitutionally, well we will be in a position to say they shall not go. If they are going to get Is 3d for butter, what can we give them in return? An open port, so that they can send in their goods duty free! which will free all the workers in Kaiapoi, Petone, Hannahs’ and all such manufacturers, so they can join the unemployed. That is all we can offer. Will you still let them go? Being an ironmoulder by trade, I used to make centrifugal pumps, which have a suction pipe and an outlet pipe. Well, from Bichard Seddon’s day down to; (Sir Joseph Ward’s United Party, this pump was sucking about one hundred million pounds in loans beside sucking hundreds of milions of pounds, that went round and round the pump—building roads, railways, harbours and electric power stations. There was not one penny or coin of any description put into the actual building, it only paid the labour and circulated; and the. outlet pipe was in America, with a branch in 'Sweden, for machinery in factories. What did we get from America for all these hundreds of millions? Benzine and oils, which go up in smoke and are no more use; agricultural machinery, which, owing to the amount of graphite, soon eats away, and last, but enormously the most, thousands of motor cars, which, if their so-called owners paid their just debts,. 50 per cent, will not be registered this year. After all, that enormous amount has gone to America, and on which New Zealand cannot pay the interest. We, in our dying state, have the audacity to ask England to save us. I say to the Government, until you tell us what you are going for and what you are going to give, you should not leave .New Zealand. X am not giving anything away. ;Sir Otto Niemeyer, the banker who knows our rotten position as well as the rest of the politicians at home do. I say the solution is not m Ottawa; it is New Zealand.— I am, ete.,

QUERIST.

['Our. correspondent has written several times in strains similar to the above. We suggest that he confine any future letters to an explanation of the •solution” which he has more than once hinted he possesses.—Ed. ‘Star.’!