POPULATION NEEDED

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19365, 1 July 1937, Page 4

POPULATION NEEDED

EXPANSION CALLED FOR DOMINION RESPONSIBILITY MR. BARNARD’S VIEWS (Special to the Herald.) WAIROA, this day. The responsibility of the people of New Zealand to face the need for expanding their numbers was referred to by the Hon. W. E. Barnard, Speaker of th,e House of Representatives, during' his address at yesterday’s ceremony at Mohaka. Only by filling the country to a point nearer its natural carryingcapacity, he held, could the people continue to justify their existence in a land exceptionally favourably endowed in climatic and other conditions. - After paying a tribute to the men who had been engaged on the Mohaka viaduct job, the Speaker asked -the gathering to consider the provision of such public facilities as railways from a point of view of population needs. In a country capable of clothing and feeding a great number* of people, the population to-day was only one and a-half million. It was necessary that people should realise the position. They must ask themselves whether one and a-half million people in a country rich in natural resources could continue to say to others: “You must not come in!’’ Opening up the Country Others might use against New Zealanders the very argument which the Minister of Public Works, the' Hon. R. Semple, had used earlier in the ceremony. These big public works Were opening up the country, but they were only justified on the assumption that the population would continue to expand, and that more people would use the facilities provided. The Government could not go on building public works unless there was an expansion of the population. Many people were afraid that increasing the population by any means would increase unemployment. He held that the two matters had no connection. If the country went on in the old way, there would always be a -proportion 'of unemployment, no matter what the population might be. The Dominion had had to seek and find new methods of dealing with unemployment, and it was no use connecting population and unemployment up together.