"NO PARADISE"

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26544, 20 August 1947, Page 4

"NO PARADISE"

Some exceedingly bitter criticism of New Zealand conditions was voiced by the British immigrants who left on return to their homeland last week after a brief but apparently disappointing stay’in the Dominion. The housing shortage, the high cost of living and the over-glowing propaganda disseminated in Great Britain were the major causes of complaint, and the lack of entertainment was a comparatively minor item which caused dissatisfaction among the women members of the returning party. That some of the opinions expressed were intensified in their harshness by personal lack of adaptability cannot be doubted, but the fact remains that much-needed immigrants have come to this country full of hope for the future and have departed with their hopes dashed. Nothing hurls like the truth. Chauvinistic feeling has, in many sections of the community, developed in New Zealand to the point where it more nearly resembles smugness than anything else. Because writers overseas have seen fit to describe New Zealand as a paradise, and have given glowing—and often garbled—accounts of the living conditions and the enlightened legislature of this Dominion, there has been a growing tendency to self-satisfaction and complacency. The healthy attitude denoted by civic and national pride has deteriorated to such an extent that many New Zealanders apparently consider that little is needed to make this Dominion a veritable Utopia. ' Grave weaknesses and defects in the plans for post-war reconstruction have been overlooked on the grounds that conditions are far worse elsewhere, notably in wartorn Great Britain. And now immigrants from a country which might reasonably be expected to be in far worse plight than New Zealand, where not a bomb fell, have not only criticised but backed up their criticism by returning to their homeland after only a few months. Their action is a blow to the Dominion’s prestige. It is no less a blow to the prestige of those responsible for the conditions prevailing to-day and the Government must rouse itself and set its house in

order. To exploit fully the resources of the country a greater population is needed. But a floating population comprising people who stay in the Dominion long enough to discover that the rosy pictures of prosperity which caused them to set out are but a snare and a delusion will not suffice. Wise legislation and careful planning are needed to ensure that there is no repetition of an occurrence which should have jolted all thinking New Zealanders out of their complacency and caused them to take stock of themselves and their country.