NATIONAL DEBT POSITION

Southland Times, Issue 23584, 11 August 1938, Page 5

NATIONAL DEBT POSITION

“Budget Did Not Give True Indication” UNEMPLOYMENT IN DOMINION

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, August 10. “The Minister of Finance (the Hon. W. Nash) will go down in history as the only Minister who ever reduced the National Debt by increasing it, said Mr S. G. Smith (Nat., New Plymouth) speaking in the financial debate in the House of Representatives today. , , Mr Smith said that before the publication of the official figures members of the Government party had been travelling around the country contending that the National Debt had been reduced. When the figures showed them to be wrong, however, they changed their tune and claimed that what they had said was that the London debt had been reduced. The Budget itself carefully avoided setting out the real financial position of New Zealand ahd did. not give a true indication of that position to anyone who read it. “There has never been such. mistrepresentation as that indulged in by the Labour Party with the unemployment position,” said Mr Smith. “In September or October 1935, when I was Minister of Employment, I altered the system of showing the number of unemployed, as I did not think it right that we should include among the unemployed men who were working full time on relief on standard rates of pay. The present Minister of Labour (the Hon. H. T. Armstrong) has. accused me of rigging the figures, but he is showing them in exactly the same way today as I showed them in 1935. In the Budget it is stated that at the peak there were 79,500 unemployed in New Zealand, but it does not state that more than 30,000 of those were in full-time work at full standard wages. UNEMPLOYMENT SITUATION “It is obvious that this Government, although it has been in office for three years, has never realized the gravity of the unemployment situation,” Mr Smith said. “Never has one word been uttered that would suggest that the Government has seriously considered the problem. The people were told at the last election that the Labour Party had a plan for the cure of unemployment, but it has never even suggested a remedy. Even in these days of so-called prosperity there are still children without boots and short of clothes.” The Minister of Health (the Hon. P. Fraser): Where? “In my district alone the Hospital Board is spending £5OOO a year on relief, which is only £2OOO a year less than during the depression,” said Mr Smith. Mr Fraser: Well, in Wellington the figure has dropped from £32,000 to £12,000. If you can bring me a case of destitution I will undertake that it will be put right. Discussing the contention that farm costs had not risen materially, Mr Smith said that the statement was contradicted by evidence to be found in official reports that both in the North Island and the South Island dairy factories had been closed and more were likely to be closed through high costs. In addition, farmers were faced with labour shortage and although some farmers in his district were offering 20 per cent, and 40 per cent, above the wages prescribed in the Agricultural Workers Act labour was not procurable. Many farmers had gone out of dairying altogether and others had reduced their herds because of the higher costs which they were now called upon to meet