MIGRATION SCHEME

Taranaki Daily News, 12 November 1934, Page 14

MIGRATION SCHEME

REVIVAL BEING DISCUSSED. CONFERENCE CALLED. To consider the question of Empire migration as it affects New Zealand in relation to its obligations and privileges as a member of the British Commonwealth of nations, a conference of representatives of organisations and of individuals is to be held in Wellington on November 21. The conference has been called by Messrs. A. Leigh Hunt and C. S. Falconer, on behalf of the Dominion Settlement Association, and by Messrs. W. J. Holdsworth and N. G. Gribble, on behalf of the New Zealand ..Land Settlement and Development League. The visit to the Dominion within the next few weeks of Mr. Malcolm MacDonald, Under-Secre-tary of Dominion Affairs, has instigated the move. The invitations to the conference state that the question is likely to come under two heads: What action, if any, should be taken by the respective governments? and what action, if any, can be taken by organisations or groups, with or without Government co-operation? Explaining in an interview the events which have led to the attempt to revive interest in immigration, Mr. A. Leigh Hunt recalled at Wellington th? Dominion conference on migration convened by the Wellington Chamber of Commerce in 1925, of which gathering he was chairman. The delegates to that conference were representative of the same or similar bodies which have been invited to the one this month. At the conference it was pointed out that the system of assisted immigration which was then operating was not working altogether satisfactorily because undesirable people were coming out to New Zealand, the necessary essentials for the carrying out of the scheme being, firstly, that the person selected was of the right type, character and occupation, and, secondly, that New Zealand had to have the organisation at this end to put him right into his job. The opposition to immigration, said Mr. Hunt, had been the result of unsystematic immigration, which gave the new arrival nothing to do unless he displaced another worker, and in his opinion it had been a mistake to stop it suddenly like turning off a water tap in the expectation that the supply could be as easily turned on again. It could not, because there had been a cessation in the publicity for the Dominion. The conference founded the Dominion Settlement Association, “a federation of all bodies working for a wise and judicious settlement of New Zealand,” but the organisation was • prevented from attaining its objects by the slump and the cessation of assisted immigration. HOUSE OF COMMONS PROPOSAL. The contention of the Empire Development and Research Committee of the House of Commons, the report of which was issued 12 months ago, and has been reprinted in New Zealand, is that, had the £200,000,000 spent in England in unemployment relief between 1920 and 1932 been spent in mass settlement, 200,000 settlers with families of three each, or 800,000 souls could have been settled permanently overseas with every hope of the total expenditure being paid back in 30 years with benefit to Great Britain, which is over-populated, and to the Dominions, which require population to give them a better economic balance and security from military aggression. The approximate cost of settlement on the lines described in the report is estimated at £lOOO per family in Canada, but higher in Australia, and a definite scheme in a definite area for the settlement of 40,000 families of four each at a cost of £50,000,000, which would save Great Britain £15,000,000 in ten years in unemployment costs and £2,800,000 a year thereafter. There is visualised the settlement of large areas at one time by British chartered companies, which would be responsible for the success of the settlers, with the creation of villages and towns inhabited by the immigrants. The companies would not be expected to make a profit, but provide gilt-edged investment. The woud-be settlers would be trained in England, and if discovered unfit for colonial farm life would be rejected be- 1 fore their families had been shifted. Mr. Hunt said that it was a fallacy that there was no land in New Zealand suitable for such community settlement, the pumice lands in the Taupo district only requiring scientific treatment to be turned into smiling dairy farms. When Mr. MacDonald landed in New Zealand he should not be met with the statement that nobody and no organisations in this country were interested in immigration, and that everybody here was preoccupied entirely with the price of butter-fat today. Those who were calling the conference were looking to the future, and only by the use of foreright could a nation be built.