FINAL BUSINESS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20273, 6 April 1934, Page 10

FINAL BUSINESS.

N.Z. Labour Conference Concluded. UNEMPLOYMENT DECISIONS. With the singing of “The Red Flag," and “Auld Lang Syne,” the eighteenth annual conference of the New Zealand Labour Party concluded last evening. It was decided that a propaganda campaign be initiated in co-operation with the Alliance of Labour and other labour organisations to place the party’s policy and unemployment resolutions before the public. A resolution was adopted protesting against the Government’s administration of the Unemployment Act and it was decided that the national executive of the party and the Parliamentary members get as full a statement as possible as to the receipts and expenditure of the Unemployment Board aid <f all subsidies paid by the Board to private firms. Other resolutions carried regarding unemployment included the following: “That relief grants be extended to women and youths qualified for employment, and for whom no work is available; That the pension e.ge for aged persons be reduced; That the compulsory school leaving age be raised to fifteen years; That all relief works be abolished and the present unemployed be employed on productive and developmental work at standard rates of pay on the basis of a six-hour day or a thirty-five-hour week; That sustenance payments be confined to the transitory periods in which it may not be possible to place those registering for work on productive jobs; That subsidy payments to other than public authorities be entirely abolished.” A lengthy resolution was adopted deploring the present policies and tendencies of governments making for a drift towards war, and urging that all steps be taken to counter the effects of such policies. It was also decided: “That this conference urges upon all citizens the necessity of taking every constitutional means of securing an early election, by next November at the latest, and to make immediate preparations for that event.”