TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays FRIDAY 16th JULY, 1943 MINISTRY OF REHABILITATION

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 67, Issue 5642, 16 July 1943, Page 2

TE AWAMUTU COURIER Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays FRIDAY 16th JULY, 1943 MINISTRY OF REHABILITATION

THE Prime Minister’s announcement that Major C. F. Skinner is to be Minister of Rehabilitation, devoting the whole of his time to the duties of this portfolio, is to be welcomed because the New Minister will bring fresh energies to them, in a Cabinet long growm stale, and first-hand knowledge of the serviceman’s views and needs. He will also, it is to he hoped, have familiarised himself in England with what is being planned and done in preparation for peace and the return of soldier, sailor, and airman to, civil life. It remains to be seen whether Major Skinner’s want of administrative experience will be a handicap he can rapidly reduce or not. What must be viewed less hopefully is the handicap imposed on him by his being appointed within a f ew weeks or months of a General Election. Strong as his ■own wish may be to concentrate on the'shaping and direction of policy measures, he will find that it is not easy to gain and hold the attention of colleagues who are thinking of polling day and scattering to platform and microphone. In Major Skinner’s appointment the Prime Minister has announced, no doubt, a first instalment of the reorganisation- of which he gave some hint .a. few .weeks, ago. He indicated, for. Z example, that the Rehabilitation Z Board could not continue on a basis of - part-time,service; and. it was to be Z assumed that he had in mind, also, the need to give the board proper staffing. What is to be done;-however; is not likely to be known or even decided - until Major Skinner takes office. But while the public waits, there is time ; tor urge on thd 'Government again the vital importance of seeing the problem ' in its right shape and size before re- , organising to solve it. It has not - been done yet. What lies before the - Government and the country is not the narrowly conceived task of finding jobs for servicemen, placing, assisting, .'and training. Rehabilitation is the word stamped on the Act of Parlia- - ment that authorises everything so far done and so far 'talked about; and plan and action

-have taken the stamp of this restricting word. Reconstruction is the task ahead; and it reaches far beyond the conversion of servicemen into employed civilian. The notion of finding 'jobs for the men who put their uni--1 forms off exposes its dangerous limit--ations in the clearest light when, as -has happened again and again, in Ministerial and other statements, the object of policy is seen! to. shrink to ; the avoidance of unemployment. To - quote a recent example, Mr C. M Williams, MP., was reported to nave Zurged local bodies to adopt housing Z schemes, because building “gage more work . . . than any other industry and

so it had a big value in rehabilitation, apart from meeting the housing short- - age.” A questionaire addressed to

local bodies some time ago sounded, 2 and was widely accepted, very much ■as if its purpose was to beat up ~ labour-absorbing jobf.. Thjp assumpZtion, tacit or open, that the problem Zto be solved is a problem of possible Z unemployment or under-employment "is. a vicious one. It is unnecessary; but, if it is made, and repeated, and • adopted, unemployment and under--employment are the al mo^f.certain results, and mis-employment is certain. Z The wise and necessary assumption ‘is that scope for full employment, and constant employment, is assured Zby the Dominion’s’post-war producZtion needs. The task will not be to -find jobs for men but men for jobs. The question will be —oriFnow—one -of a programme of development in - which priorities, proportions, and -methods will count 100 per cent, and I the expedients of job-making and re.lief will not count at all. The Do--1 minion will .have the'lbad of Its war Zdebt and"pensTons to ‘carry. Urban -housing is far In arrears; so are "farm maintenance, rural housing, and the improvement of rural standards of • living generally; so are the maintenance and construction of roads and

bridges; so is forest management; so ; are;measures to, win back the waste Z lands and save the wasting ones; so is power development, upon which the Zfuture--of industry depends; so. is town planning, which must move as * industry moves. These are some of the country’s needs and obligations. Only expanding production will" meet them. Only full employment, planned over the wide field of industry and public service, will produce enough.