RELIEF IN QUEENSLAND

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17948, 28 November 1932, Page 5

RELIEF IN QUEENSLAND

COSTING £4,000,000 LITTLE TO SHOW FOR IT BRISBANE, Nov. 14. The Under-Secretary of the Department of Labor, Mr. W. H. Austin, in his annual report says that about £2,000,000 has been raised and expended to relieve distress. The expenditure, he put it, has been principally on. “artificial” work, and if loan expenditure is added the total by June 30, 1933, including all funds, will be £4.000,000. That is to say, the huge sum will have been spent, and the State will have very little to show for it.

Mr. Austin adds that a large proportion of the unemployed, particularly in the industrial centres, will never get back to their former avocations, and will have to seek other means of livelihood. He reiterates the advantages of the land settlement scheme, dealt with in his report of the preceding year, and continues an advocacy of a system for settlers of “living on the land.” It is very difficult to persuade any Government that there is not sonic way other and easier than land settlement to provide for those who arc unemployed. The Moore Government and the Forgnn Smith Government alike declined to abandon the spirit of hopefulness—a very dangerous spirit, in this case—that something would turn up to spin the wheels of prosperity, and that relief work and land settlement would no longer be necessary. That optimistic attitude is continued, but it is difficult to say where or when the revival will occur.