EASTER EGGS FOR CABINET MINISTERS.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIV, Issue 21014, 18 April 1938, Page 6

EASTER EGGS FOR CABINET MINISTERS.

Although Easter is regarded as the season of giving and receiving Easter Eggs, symbols of varied significance, it can be taken for granted that New Zealand's first Labour Government now in the concluding months of its term of office, will not feel very much at ease as it contemplates the Easter Eggs that the country presents to its responsible legislators to-day. The Easter Eggs that will remain with the Prime Minister will be a social security scheme which will make the deepest inroads into the resources of the country in prosperous years and will enormously overtax the country in years of falling national revenue. The Prime Minister has to contemplate, moreover, a long list of unredeemed election promises Hint will rise up io accuse him in an election year. The Minister of Railways faces up to a long string of railway mishaps which have created public concern, particularly in face of the reports that the men on the foolplates of the New Zealand railway services are being over worked. And on top of this the Minister finds himself confronted by a fall in nett earnings from £1,087,000 in 1935 Io £075,000 in 1937-38 —a prosperous year. And then as .Minister of Industries and Commerce, Mr Sullivan finds himself hampered by a substantial shortage of wheat; demands for a higher productive price for the wheat-growers; requests from the millers for a more generous return for services renderd in turning the wheat into flour, and spasmodic requests for cheaper bread because of the rapidly rising cost of living. He is also caught in a cleft stick between consumer and producer in many manufacturing enterprises which are finding it impossible to meet overseas competition and pay higher wages for shorter hours, without increased tariff protection, which if provided threatens to result in a boycott in the Homeland and positive hostility in the rural districts of New Zealand. The Minister of Agriculture and Lands will find in their Easter Eggs the growing hostility of the farmers who are being crushed between the heavy burden of rising costs and the falling market returns for their products. The Minister of Marketing emerges from the Easter season to find the country facing falling markets and the dairy producer beginning to discover to his wrath that an increase of a few decimals of a penny in the guaranteed price for butter fat are. being cancelled out three or four times by the increases in the cost of production that has risen by more than three pennies to the pound 1 Moreover, the Minister of Finance is beginning to see the effect of quickening inflation, because the currency, notwithstanding secret inflation, has a habit of falling and bringing down with it the purchasing power of the people. The Minister of Public Works found in his Easter Egg extensive storm damages in many parts of the country, while the employees of his own Department are seeking increased pay to help them make up the rapidly shrinking buying power of their pay. The Minister of Labour sees the approaching disappearance of the Employment Promotion Fund without the disappearance of the unemployed who for years have enjoyed the security of the millions flowing into that fund each year in money that has been expended in providing work for the workless and subsidising local governing bodies who would otherwise be unable to provide employment for the workless members of their district. The Minister, too, sees workers being thrown out of work because of the inroads imported manufactured goods are making into New Zealand’s secondary industries. The Minister of Education finds in his Easter Egg the growing opposition of a country that is gradually discovering that although the new Education Amendment Bill provides for unification in all branches of education, the real control of education is being more and more securely reposed in the hands of the bureaucracy in Wellington. And so on! All Ministers are being compelled lo face up to the plain fact that the rapidly rising costs of living, cancelling out improved spending power, is causing widespread uncertainty and this is aggravated because of (he widely held feelings that the prosperity of the country can hardly be said to be built on a sound foundation in a year when something like £17,000,000 is being expended on public works, while other large items of expenditure, financed from an undisclosed source, are being used to stimulate artificially the spending power of the people.