UNEMPLOYMENT POLICY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20823, 16 March 1931, Page 8

UNEMPLOYMENT POLICY.

In deciding to extend the. life of scheme No. 5 for a further month the Unemployment Board, on its own confession, is simply continuing a temporising method of finding work. It is better than paying sustenance for no work at all, but when that has been said the best has been said of it. The extension could be accepted more equably if accompanied by evidence of plans for anything better. Unfortunately it is not. Mr. Finn, for instance, says that by it the board would be given a further "breathing space" in which to prepare a new scheme. This is a complete admission that it has no substitute for it, that, in fact, the four months of its functioning have yielded nothing beyond the artificial creation of work which does nothing toward solving, in the smallest and most modest way, the problem of unemployment. In a statement issued just before Christmas the board said that it was "compelled by circumstances to relieve distress and had adopted a policy of subsidising work. . •• • The board proposed, as far as possible, to confine future subsidies either to works which were immediately productive, or to development work which would open up new avenues of employment." It has not managed to do that yet, or even to begin on it. Neither does it encourage the hope that it will begin in the near future. The chairman of the board, in an official statement, suggests that local bodies are to be invited to submit proposals covering work three years in advance of the usual schedule. This method of anticipating possible needs is claimed to have the endorsement of competent authorities in England, America and on the Continent, but who or what those authorities are is not stated. Judged by ordinary standards, it is much more like a gambling throw made on the chance that there will be an economic change for the better before the time is up. In the present state of local body finances everywhere, how is it to be done? The general difficulty is to find money for immediate needs, without anticipating those of the future. The Minister does offer a gleam of hope when he speaks of encouraging productive or partly productive work in rural areas, getting abandoned farms back into cultivation, clearing, subdividing and developing Crown lands, and the like. Properly planned and executed, this policy could yield results of permanent worth. The trouble at present is that it occupies so inferior a position in the pi-o-fessed intentions of the board compared with merely temporising measures. If such policies were put in the forefront, the criticism to which the board seems extraordinarily sensitive would be vastly diminished in volume and force.