MR MEACHEN’S SPEECH.

Kaikoura Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 65, 21 August 1944, Page 2

MR MEACHEN’S SPEECH.

HOUSING AND ELECTRIC POWER. In the House of Representatives on Wednesday evening last Mr E. P. Meachen, Member for Marlborough, when dealing with the housing problem quoted figures showing the number of houses constructed in Marlborough and the Dominion during the period the Labour Government had been in office, and referred to the terrible plight the country was in under the previous Government. Mr Meachen said he agreed that housing was one of the major problems facing the country to-day, and he considered that something more than was being done would have to be accomplished. . Everybody knew there was a shortage of materials, including tirnjber, and the use of alternative material should be considered. New Zealand had unlimited supplies of shingle being washed into the sea, and there was cement available and also materials for making wallboard, and instead of further depicting valuable timber resources they should use these materials and give the sawmills a rest. Practically every sawmill in the country had had to fill urgent war orders and had cut out all timber within reach. Mr Meachen said it was no wonder that houses were costing what they were to-day. In his opinion it was something of a racket, and “the sooner we get to the bottom of it the better.” There had been a suggestion that builders were not prepared to build houses, even for men who had been overseas fighting for years for the security of the Dominion. If that were so it was an indefensible attitude. Mr Meachen referred to the houses being erected by private enterprise in Hamilton, and condemned the building of such structures. The Government had also built houses in Hamilton that wore a credit to the builders ad the Government, and these had been most favourably commented upon by the British and ‘Canadian delegates when passing through the Dominion. New Zealand had done a wonderful job in respect to housing, and no country in the world had done better. Mr Meachen went on to deal with hydro-electric power, and said that after the Cobbe system had been completed attention should be given to the supply of elecric power to the southern portion of Marlborough. Kaikoura had its own town supply, but thousands of pounds were being expended annually on benzine and fuel oil to keep the dairy plants going. He urged the necessitv for a uniform charge for electricity in the interests of decentralisation. Manufacturers could not be expected to go where labour was available in smaller centres if electricity was going to cost six times as much there. He was of opinion that in the Clarence there was a source of supply that could link up the Cobbe scheme in the north with the Coleridge schemp in the south, thus giving the southern portion of Marlborough electric power for the farmers and the people generally.