PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 64, 17 August 1944, Page 1

PRIVATE ENTERPRISE.

RESPONSIBLE FOR HOUSE SHORTAGE. How quick we are to forget! Doling the dark days of the slump, when the Tory Party and private enterprise had things their own way, the incomes of workers were so small that they’ could not pay rent. The rent had to go on the Kathleen Mavourneen principle. The landlords being unable to collect rent there was no income for themj, private enterprise shut up its door, and there were no buildings erected. What was the use of building when no rent was available because the Tory Party did not give the workers sufficient to exist on? Few houses were built, Pri-vate-Enterprise let the people down. Then the State came to the assistance of the people, and constructed decent houses, which the Nationalists termed dog boxes, with rooms that the resn dents could not swing a cat in. Then, with another change of view’, the Nationalists averred that the rents were too high, but what is the true position? There are hundreds of business people who would be only too glad to rent a State house. Whilst the tenants of State houses pay up to 28/6 a week for a comfortable home, Private Enterprise is denuinding and getting £3 10/ a week for old, weatherworn houses not

fit to exist in. The statement was made in the House the other night that there were plenty of large houses that could be secaired by the Government, th<* reason given being that so many owners of this class of house had got beyond the stage of owning a large house, and preferred smaller houses, thus robbing the smaller-earning man from securing them. They wanted to go into retirement, said a Nationalist nuember, and dispose of their old buildings to tho poor public. Think of it, £80,000,000 at current account, when the nation is in need of these funds to fight the battle for freedom. That is how the Nationalists help the nation. The method adopted on other occasions was to transfer their funds abroad—to Germany, Japan, R'umania, and Austria—to destroy the credit of New Zealand Yes, Mr Private Enterprise, you do a good job when huge profits are available, but like the banks, in time> of stress, funds are sadly missing.