H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1931 THE REHABLITATION FUND.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXI, Issue 304, 8 December 1931, Page 6

H.B. TRIBUNE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 1931 THE REHABLITATION FUND.

It is now more than seven months since the Hawke’s Bay Earthquake Act was passed. Under it authority was taken for the raising of a fund of a million and a quarter by the sale of reserve securities held by the Government in London. That fund, so the Act directed, was to be devoted to the purpose of “granting financial assistance to persons who had suffered loss or damage by reason of the earthquake in such cases, to such extent, and subject to'such terms and conditions as the Minister of Finance thinks fit.” The Act went on to provide for the establishment of a Rehabilitation Committee, consisting of five members, whose function it would be to investigate applications for assistance and make recommendations to the Minister. Within less than a month after the passing of the Act that committee was duly constituted. Very shortly after their appointment the members of the Committee issued a statement of the principles upon which they proposed to proceed in the administration of the fund. Regular readers of the “Tribune” will recall that strong exception was at once taken in this column both to the matter and the tone of this statement and also of the “regulations” subsequently prescribed for applicants by the Committee. These protests were repeated and emphasised at intervals for some considerable time, and the question was asked, without being answered, as to whether the Minister, as the one having the last say, personally approved of the Committee’s principles and regulations. It was particularly pointed out that these documents strongly indicated that the Committee was regarding the fund as one that was to be applied rather in the restoration of buildings on business areas than in the relief from individual losses, no matter of what character, which the Statute clearly contemplated. However, at the time we were unable to stir up anything in the nature of concerted or effective action among those chiefly concerned. While there were many complaints thee as to the conduct of affairs, no strong line was taken such as was likely to bring about results..

These unavailing mutterings have continued ever since, while the Committee’s movements have been so slow and deliberate that they were failing altogether to achieve the object in view and were, indeed, retarding rather than expediting recovery from the losses suffered in the earthquake area. At length, however, business interests in Napier and Hastings have shaken off the patience that had long since ceased to be a virtue. They have decided to send a deputation to Wellington to make representations to the new Minister of Finance, the Hon. Downie Stewart, and see if he cannot be induced, as his statu tory responsibility requires, to take some more active part than his predecessor in that office in seeing that the fund is speedily put to the purposes for which it was intended. It may be said that there is an impression abroad that the Committee is no’ wholly to blame for the delays that have occurred in getting this money to work on the objects for which it was voted. It is felt that at headquarters in Wellington there is some chilling influence in operation, some dead hand, that is preventing even such recommendations as the Committee may have made from being adopted and carried into effect. It is, however, very difficult at this distance to track this influence to its source. That, however, should be a comparatively easy task for a Minister with all channels of official information open to him. In this connection it cannot but be recalled that at the time the Earthquake Bill was before the House there was issued in the name of the Associated Chambers of Commerce a most deprecatory statement regarding the special provision that was being made by the State for earthquake suffer ers. An extract from this will give some idea of the attitude that was then taken up. “In Hawke’s Bay,” it said, “on February 3rd a large number of people were ruined in a few minutes by a sudden act of God. Throughout New Zealand thousands of people have been equallyruined, but, instead of being killed by one quick shot from Nature’s artillery, they have been choked to death by economic pressure. Why, therefore, should special consideration be extended to the sufferers from the earthquake and be denied to equally deserving sufferers from the national calamity of the slump in primary and ppcondary products?” The answer to this strange question is, of course, very easy in that Hawke’s Bay is suffering more probably than any other district from the slump while at the same time having to cope with the exceptional local disaster of the earthquake. We should be loth to think that so influential a body as that quoted was still maintaining this most ungenerous attitude, but at the same time doubt must continue until there is a specific disclaimer of it.