UNEMPLOYMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23213, 10 June 1937, Page 5

UNEMPLOYMENT

GOVERNMENT'S POLICY CHALLENGED MR W. A. BODKIN'S VIEWS "In no country in the world is wealth so evenly distributed as in New Zealand, and no country enjoys a better standard of living. Surely that proves that in the past New Zealand must have been well and wisely governed," said Mr W. A. Bodkin, M.P. (Central Otago). in an address at Kaiapoi, in leading up to an attack on the Government for its failure to tackle effectively the unemployment problem. Mr Bodkin said that in less than a year under the Labour regime a reaction had set in. Though New Zealand was one of .ne most fertile countries in the world, and though it had just enjoyed the boom year in its history, there were in the Dominion to-day 56,000 adult male workers to whom the industries of the country could not offer a job. No country could remain prosperous unless its industries were in a position to maintain its in employment. " What then is wrong with New Zealand?" asked Mr Bodkin. "There is nothing wrong with the country. The people, too. are all riglu for they are almost 100 per cent, pioneer stock, which is the very flower of the British race. Our exports last year reached the enormous figure of £60,000,000—a record. What is wrong when a country such as this, with only a population of 1,500,000, has 56,000 men whom the industries cannot profitably employ? The answer is: The Government, and the measures it has enacted. Compare the position to-day with that obtaining in the prosperous years of 1925, 1926, 1927, and 1928 under the former Government —there were than no 56,000 male workers to whom the private industries could not offer a job. " If anybody doubts this, let him go to an employer of labour and he will find that the employer's main concern is cutting down his staff, getting rid of as much hired labour as he can. Teams are being sold by the farmers for the same reason. Go into the factories and you will find that all the men who cannot measure up to 100 per cent, efficiency are being made to go, and are being replaced by labour-saving machinery, because the Government has made it impossible to employ them profitably."