PARLIAMENT

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 270, 29 October 1932, Page 8

PARLIAMENT

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES THE BUDGET DEBATE. A FURTHER ADJOURNMENT. Wellington, October 28. The Budget debate was continued this afternoon by Mr W. A. Bodkin (Central Otago), who stressed the need for obsorbing unemployed in productive works such as the development of the gold mining industry irrigation in Central Otago and drainage work in the North Island. So far as gold mining was concerned he considered that valuable results could be obtained by spending money on the purchase of plant to enable unemployed to adopt more up-to-date methods. Money could be provided by the issue of Treasury bonds—say, £8,000.000 a year—and this, supplemented by £4,000,000 a year collected by the Unemployment board, should be sufficient to keep men on productive works. Mr H. Atmore (Nelson) declared that the Government had completely failed to face the conditions of the age. The time had come when it was imperative that there should be a reduction of working hours, and arrangements should be made to ensure that everyone received his just share of the country’s wealth. Difficulty had arisen because there were insufficient ticket wages to allow men to receive satisfactory commodity wages. New Zealand to-day possessed more ability to feed and clothe than she had had in the prosperous year of 1926—in fact, more than ever before in her history—yet people were starving. All that was lacking was currency, and he condemned the failure of the Government to utilise the credit of the people for the purpose of issuing sufficient paper money to overcome the shortage of ticket wages to which he had referred THE GIFT OF WAITANGI. Sir Apirana Ngata spoke o s reported in another column, then after paying a tribute to the Governor-General for the gift of the Waitangi site, said that the Ngapuhis had expressed a desire to erect a suitable Maori memorial on the spot. He had explained to them that there was no money but had pointed out that there were eight years before the centenary of the signing of the treaty. He had submitted a suggestion that they should contribute 5/* per year for each cow milked and this had been taken up. There were 1000 cows being milked by the Ngapuhis, and in eight years they would have £2OOO with which a memorial in the form of a carved meeting house could be erected. He suggested that Mr E. Tirikatene (Southern Maori) should endeavour to obtain the co-operation of the Ratana Party in this project, and if this were forthcoming it would be certain that the memorial could be erected worthy of the gift of His Excellency. The debate was interrupted by the rising of the House at 5.30 till 2.30 on Tuesday afternoon.