“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1937. IMMIGRATION POLICY.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 387, 19 March 1937, Page 4

“Taranaki Central Press” FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 1937. IMMIGRATION POLICY.

The speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. W. E. Barnard, who has concluded a speaking tour of the Dominion in the cause of Empire migration, expresses his pleasure at the “response of the people to his advocacy of the need for increasing the Dominion’s population.” For the most part, however, Mr. Barnard, who is a Labour member, has been preaching to the converted. There are very few New Zealanders who do not realise that, with double its present population. New Zealand would be more prosperous and more secure and would have a richer and more varied social life. It is also generally realised that natural increase alone would not add substantially to New Zealand’s population and may not even be sufficient, half a century hence, to keep it stationary. This, in brief, is the case for immip’ration; and its validity is accepted by the country as a whole and by the Government. The trouble is that the Government’s acceptance is hedged about by so many qualifications and evasions that it is worthless.

According to Mr. Nash, the resumption of migration to New Zealand is “largely dependent on the more favourable treatment of New Zealand in the United Kingdom markets.” Mr. Savage has postulated that “if people come to New Zealand from England their jobs must come with them. He has also said that the real secret of migration policy is to make the country “so prosperous that people want to come to it in order to share in its prosperity. He has also said that the “best approach to the problem” is by-way of an increase in British capital invested in New Zealand. what he will say next depends on what happens to come into his head. It is by now depressingly clear that, for the Government, population and migration are problems to be dealt with in the Greek kalends. Mr. Barnard’s next speaking tour need not take him outside 1 arliament Buildings.