AN UNPROMISING SUGGESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 May 1930, Page 8

AN UNPROMISING SUGGESTION.

In an almost, passionate telegram to the Hon. G. W. Forbes, the Minister who seems to be regarded as the head of the Cabinet while the Prime Minister is laid aside with illness, Mr. M. J. Savage, the Labour member for Auckland West, urges that Parliament should be called together at once to deal with the problem of unemployment. Unfortunately Mr. Savage’s telegram does not convey the impression that he is ready to offer a remedy for unemployment. He that men and women want work and aye “ready to face anything,” and asks what the Government will do to give relief. “If,” he continues, “•Cabinet will do nothing else, it should at least call Parliament together and place the responsibility with members, who are helpless to do anything worth while until the House meets. We will do anything under the sun that will help to relieve the position.” Surely Mr. Savage would have done far more useful service if he had suggested something that the Government or Parliament might do. There is not the slightest necessity to call Parliament together if it is to do no more than urge the Government to proceed with a scheme of relief works similar to that undertaken last year, for the Government has ample authority to act. But if members generally have no more idea than Mr. Savage seems to have of how to set about the solution of the problem of unemployment the summoning of Parliament would be a mere waste of time, besides being a costly business. In the event of the Cabinet adopting Mr. Savage’s advice to “place the responsibility” with members what would he the result? Probably relief works would be started on a grand scale, expenditure would run riot, and in a little while the Government would be left with an emp:y Treasury and a worse unemployment problem. If there are of unemployed in Auckland the need for finding means of relieving their difficulties is urgent. The Cabinet is amply equipped with reports and recommendations to guide its deliberations on the subject and should be quite capable of reaching satisfactory decisions. Happily a full meeting of the Cabinet is to be held next week at Rotorua —the first since Sir Joseph Ward visited Wellington in the first week of March. Parliament, of course, should open within six weeks, so that Ministers have little enough time to prepare for the session. As Mr. Stallworthy said at Auckland the other day, every part of the country has been brought into touch with Ministers during the past six months. It is high time for them to settle down to their desks and get some constructive work done.