THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY “Public Service.” MONDAY, MAY 13, 1946. CONTROLS & EMPLOYMENT

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 55, Issue 32712, 13 May 1946, Page 4

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is Incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, FRIDAY “Public Service.” MONDAY, MAY 13, 1946. CONTROLS & EMPLOYMENT

If the policy of full employment, which has received widespread support, is to be realised in fact there is need for prompt attention to certain economic and political trends in New Zealand today. Mr Fraser has said that in a free country workers cannot continue to be directed to employment, and therefore certain manpower controls are being or have been liftedBut there is a danger of another form of control, equally irksome, which may direct men from their present to other unwanted employment. This danger comes from prohibitions of one kind or another on the supply of raw materials which form the basis of much useful employment. If these prohibtiions continue there will be displacement of labour and eventually unemployment. Coal is perhaps the outstanding example. Because insufficient coal is available many industries have had to curtail their activities. Lack of coal is apparently the principal cause of a drastic shortage of cement, which in turn is embarrassing builders, concrete workers and all the allied trades, which employ many thousands of men. Are these men to be forced by a very effective form of control to seek employment in other trades? Conversely, a substantial increase in coal production would set in train a whole series of industrial expansions which would give an enormous fillip to the prosperity of the country. Is New Zealand to admit inability to master the coal production problem by whatever means are necessary? There are many other industries in which lack of raw material is putting a severe brake on recovery and preventing that return to adequate production which is acknowledged as the only remedy for inflation and high cost of living. With an infusion of manpower, possibly by immigration, at strategic points, the country could be lifted 7 out of the slough caused by shortages and allowed to expand its production and its standard of living very substantially. It is a grave mistake to imagine that because some industries still lack manpower that such a condition will continue indefinitely or that the withholding of raw materials by any of the several obvious means, is healthy for the future of New Zealand. Mr Nash could with benefit employ a portion of the huge accumulation of funds in London to relieve the situation.