“BABIES ARE THE BEST IMMIGRANTS”

Northern Advocate, 22 March 1937, Page 6

“BABIES ARE THE BEST IMMIGRANTS”

Minister Refers To N.Z.’s. Disquieting Birth-Rate

r per Press Association. Copyright ,l INVERCARGILL, This Day. “The most disquieting and depressing feature of our national statistics is the fall in the birth-rate,” said the Minister of Health, the Hon. P. Fraser, jn his address at the opening of the new hospital yesterday. “That our birth-rate should be kept as high as possible is important to the country at present,” he said, “and of immense importance to the future of the country. “Steps will certainly have to be taken to secure a bigger population for the Dominion, but not until New Zealand’s economic life has been so arranged to absorb all physically fit workers. Nor can there be any argument about the fact that the best ‘immigrants’ are babies born in our land and born of healthy, vigorous and intellectual parents, parents such as we have in our own young men and women.” , Young- parents should be encouraged to have children, the IVlinister said. With this as one of its; objectives, the Government was anxious that the maternal mortality rate of the Dominion should he the lowest on earth and that motherhood should be made as safe and as free from pain as possible. To further this aim, a committee had begun an extensive examination of the maternity service of the Dominion, with a view to taking steps wherever necessary to make it the most efficient service that could be obtained, said Mr Fraser, so that the best informed, most scientific and. most skilled care and attention could be at the disposal of the mothers of the Dominion.