PHYSICAL WELFARE AND RECREATION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23333, 27 October 1937, Page 8

PHYSICAL WELFARE AND RECREATION

The Bill which was introduced in the House of Representatives yesterday to provide for a National Council of Physical Welfare and Recreation is directed to an end that must be regarded as generally commendable. The importance of physical fitness on the part of a nation is so obvious that it is unnecessary to emphasise it, and there can be no possible objection to legislation which will afford to all sections of the community facilities of access to the means of attaining this fitness. The proposed National Council will be charged with the duty of making recommendations to the Government regarding the maintenance and improvement of the well-being of the people through physical exercises, sport and recreation and to examine and consider applications for grants with this object in view. In the performance of the duty imposed upon it, the National Council will be assisted by district committees working under it, and it is intended that, as in the British scheme, the services of local authorities and voluntary organisations shall be utilised in the provision of physical and recreational facilities. It is a wise proposal that will thus enlist the activities of district organisations and local authorities, but we hope that the Minister of Internal Affairs will drop the provision that local authorities may

raise loans in terms of the legislation without securing the prior consent of the ratepayers. Local authorities are now elected for a term of three years, and that term is sufficiently long for them to forfeit the confidence of those who elected them and sufficiently long also for issues to arise that were never dreamt of at the time of the election of the members of the authorities. The issues, moreover, that may be related to the improvement of the physical fitness of a people are not confined to sport, recreation and gymnastics. The question of diet, for instance, is one that cannot be wholly disregarded. There is, the medical correspondent of The Times has pointed out with reference to the British scheme, ignorance in markets and kitchens with, as inevitable concomitants, waste and malnutrition. These, then, suggest issues to which a national institution designed to establish and maintain an Al people can hardly be indifferent. The economic side of making a nation fit, Lord Horder, an eminent authority, said recently, is intimately bound up with the problems of food production and food distribution. And no doubt there are other factors that will have to receive the consideration of the National Council. It would at any rate be a profound mistake to suppose that it is only in the playing fields, in swimming pools and in gymnasia that physical fitness may be attained. The Minister will exercise a sound discrimination in the appointment of the members of the National Council if he does not permit an undue representation of the purely sporting bodies.