Increased Production Most Pressing Problem In New Zealand To-day

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27092, 28 May 1949, Page 4

Increased Production Most Pressing Problem In New Zealand To-day

NORTH OTAGO NEWS

The marketing of primary products overseas was still the source of the national income. If this income was to be maintained and expanded, a considerable amount of the nation’s labour force must be diverted to primary production and how to attract workers back to farms and sheep runs and how to board or house them there constituted the most pressing problem in New Zealand to-day, said Mr A. McMillan, president, in his address to the annual conference of the North Otago Federated Farmers yesterday afternoon.' The great primary industry to which farmers belong had two subsidiary industries in this province—namely, the freezing works and the lime works.

Under the present stabilisation pro- i cedure, these businesses had denuded the I adjacent areas of farm labour by their ability to offer wages and conditions with which the average farmer could not compete, Mr McMillan said. His complaint was not that these works could pay too much, but that farmers had not been kept in a financial position to attract and retain the necessary employees. How many farmers, if offered labour to-morrow, at £l2 to £ls per week, could afford to employ it on ordinary unproductive maintenance work? Mr McMillan asked

The Government’s policy ot building and letting State houses in the towns and cities at low rents which the rest of the community must subsidise, was attracting workers away from rural districts, and in North Otago he had yet to see one State house built and let under this system to an agricultural worker. It was apparent, even to the casual observer, that little of the leeway due to the war had been overtaken in the eradication of gorse and rabbits, while owing to the shortage of labour and materials, no worthwhile progress had been made in the renewal and repair of fences and plant. The day of the farmer's wife being expected to conduct a boarding house for farm workers had gone, he hoped, for ever. What that system of providing for employees implied would be better understood by the general public if they realised tnat country housewives had their families to rear without the added responsibility of catering for others, with no prosDect of domestic help. No alternative had been found, and until it was. primary producers would be able to absorb little but casual day labour without the development of rural housing, for which no provision was made in the country's cost' structure. The bringing in and housing of immigrants might be the solution, but nothing was being done about it, Mr McMillan said. The forming of rabbit boards in the back : country would not improve the supply of labour to runholders, and the extermination of the rabbit by labour on the 40-hour week was an accomplishment yet to be demonstrated.