HOSPITAL AND CHARITABLE AID.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXXI, Issue LXII, 10 May 1912, Page 4

HOSPITAL AND CHARITABLE AID.

MR RUSSELL AT PALMERSTON

'The Minister of Internal Affairs (Hon. G. W. Russell) gave an address at Palmerston North on Thursday night. He said that last year old age pensions cost £335,000, the hospitals spent £237,000, and charitable aid £110,000. Of these two last amounts the ratepayers provide one-half, and the Government the other. The figures indicated that about 15s per head for the entire population of a million people was being spent on hospitals and charitable aid and pensions. That was a very large sum for a I country with a virile and healthy people. Wherever he went the' need ' was impressed on him for pro- ' viding _settlei-3 in the backblocks with medical assistance, and, where medical men were not available, with trained nurses. Above all things, it was impressed upon him that they should provide maternity nurses for those women who go out as pioneers of civilisation into the backblocks. THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL. The Minister said that the Local Government Bill had been handed down to, the present administration by its predecessors, and so far as the subjects were concerned they were going to make a determined effort to place it on the Statrite Book. There.were.'between 600 and 700 local bodies operating in New Zealand for one million people. In many of these bodies the cost of management reached 25 to 35 per cent, of the rates collected. In some cases the cost of management exceeded the rates. It would be puerile to allow such a state of things to continue. The Government had no desire to take away any rights and privileges, but to increase the pgger and responsibilities of local bodies. TWev had no desire to shunt the responsibility of Parliament, as far as finance was concerned, on to the people of the country, but the time had come when Parliament must riot continue to be regarded as a milch cow. There sTibnV be some sound system of finance, and there should be son^e? responsibility placed on the locality that got the money. He hoped that the day of the roads and bridges Grants and subsidies to local bodies, without responsibility, would cease. As to education, the entire responsibility of primary education must be maintained in the' State, the resoonsibihtv for technical education nnd "embroideries" of that class must be shared by those people who wanted them, and by the State. There vrere extravagant demands being made in large cities for hu^e technical alleges at the exnensp o i" the State- The conference at Wellington on May 21 would comprise gentlemen who could bring to bear experience of local government. It was a conference of advice or "round the tahl° talk" on local government, which would o^ablp the CJovernrpp^t to see whether New Zealand wanted local government reform, and what reform it wanted. < treat number of offices would be abol- \ ished. aM perhaps those s? -n-iped o^t woi.ilrl obi<>ot. bn+, it was for the people of New Zealand to say whether the i Present ex'ipnsivo a"d ridiculous multiplication of loci! bodies should continue. It the people did want it to continue, t.bev must accent the inevitable, and let it po on. but it reore^ented a great waste of power and of money.