REHABILITATION PLANS

Southland Times, Issue 24986, 24 February 1943, Page 4

REHABILITATION PLANS

Need For Reproductive Works (P.A.) DUNEDIN, February 23. “The first essential appears to lie in giving the greatest possible encouragement to private enterprise to absorb man-power,” said the president, Mi - D. H. Cockburn, at a meeting of the Otago Provincial Council of the Farmers Union, when in a statement on rehabilitation he urged that steps should be taken to prevent blunders in the form of expenditure on undertakings of a non-productive or luxury nature. To facilitate this, he added, the Government must be asked to restrict considerably the “menacing and domineering powers of the labour unions which of late years have wrought’such disaster in industry in New Zealand.” Local bodies were being asked by the Government for their proposals on rehabilitation in general, Mr Cockburn said. He desired to issue a warning that in the competitive race to secure the benefit of Government subsidies on such works and schemes as might be started in different localities there was a possibility that untold harm might be done. Local bodies should put under way various useful works in true relation to their order of urgency from a reproductive point of view. Mr R. S. Thompson said that as local bodies would have to bear a proportion of the cost he was sure the majority of them would undertake work that was worth while.

The following motion was carried: “That the Dominion executive be urged to take what steps it can: (a) To prevent the promulgation of flamboyant schemes sponsored for party, political or parochial reasons; (b) to ensure that representation on provincial rehabilitation committees covers all sections of the community, including farming; (c) to ensure that no man without previous experience is financed on to the land with rehabilitation money without his first undergoing a suitable apprenticeship.”