TRADESMEN FROM AUSTRALIA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 18 April 1939, Page 3

TRADESMEN FROM AUSTRALIA

i! GOVERNMENT’S HOUSING SCHEME MR HODGENS RETURNS WELLINGTON. This Day. ! Details of the work he had carried i cut in Australia in selecting workers I for the New Zealand Government’s ; housing scheme were given by Mr Hodgens. M.P.. who returned to Wellington by the Awatea yesterday. Mr Hodgens said he had met nearly 4000 tradesmen looking for work in | New Zealand, but the majority were married men, and could not be brought to the Dominion till more homes were available. He expressed the opinion that many of these men would come to New Zealand later. He had interviewed approximately I 1700 men in Sydney. 1000 in Mel- ; bourne, and 1000 in the other centres 1 visited, he said. He had engaged 308 carpenters. 29 bricklayers, 34 plasterers, 42 painters and paperhangers. 21 plumbers, 7 electricians, 1 fibrous-plas-ter maker, and 11 tilers. The majority of the men engaged were from the ranks of the carpenters because of the need for carpenters to prepare the buildings for the work to be done by the sub-trades. Mr Hodgens said he • had beeiP instructed to give preference to single men because of the acute housing shortage in New Zealand, and had told hundreds of men that he could not engage them because they were married. He had advised them to get in touch with the New Zealand Government agencies in a year’s time, and he believed hundreds of them would do During the two months he was absent from New Zealand. Mr Hodgens travelled 5000 miles and visited every State in Australia with the exception of Tasmania and Western Australia.