UNEMPLOYMENT LAWS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 277, 27 November 1935, Page 3

UNEMPLOYMENT LAWS

MR. HOGAN’S VOTING REPLY TO CRITICISM DEFENCE OF LEGISLATION. Speaking at Aramo’no, Mr. Hogan said that Air. Cotterill’s remarks iu his recent attack on him were so wide of the mark that he could only conclude that the Labour Party’s “brain trust” knew as little about .Parliamentary procedure as Air. Cc-tterill. Unemployment legislation was a new thing for New Zealand, an experiment iu fact, and the United Government had to proceed warily so as not to over-burden the Act aud bring about chaos at a time when the foundations were being laid for distributing what eventually became huge sums among the distressed which, of course, every fair-minded person will admit must have provided a considerable measure of relief even if it could not be called comfort. “I had been chairman of the Unemployment Committee in Parliament,” said Air. Hogan, “and no other member in the House had a better knowledge than I had of the difficulties surrounding the problem, so I decided to stand by the Bill and see it through to the Statute Book. The Parliamentary expression used in ‘Stick to the Bill’ and I stuck to the Bill and have never regretted it, even now after Air. Cotterill’s Opera House speech. Undoubtedly this unemployment legislation has been a boon to those out of work, and without it conditions throughout New Zealand would have been simply appalling. “However, the attitude of the Labour Party here also was simply astonishing. Immediately the Bill reached the Committee stage they commenced moving a series of amendments with bew’ildering rapidity which, if carried, could have only one effect, the destruction of the unemployment legislation. Electioneering in the House is sometimes carried out like this and then at election time the people who use this means point to the Parliamentary records to show the workers what they tried to do, knowing all the time that what, they pretended to try to do could not be done. ” When this legislation was going through it was hoped that the unemployed would not be paid less than 12s a day. They were actually being paid 14s a day on the River Road, in Air. Hogan’s own electorate, and- the sustenance had been fixed at a guinea for the husband, 17s 6d for the wife, and 4s for each child. So all Air. Cotterill’s freth about a levy of one pound a year is very transparent. Labour called for twenty-one divisions on this unemployment legislation, which after all has been of inestimable value in distributing limited employment amongst those who would bo in a sorry plight without it. Mr. Hogan said he would like to sec Afr. Cotterill go to the Airport or elsewhere and tell the men they would get no more work us the legislation was being repealed. He (Air. Hogan) had stuck loyally to the Bill in the interests nf the workers and others forced out of their former employment. Relief workers had absolutely nothing to thank Labour for as Labour was responisble for all the opposition to the Bill in its passage through the House and for the sake of an electioneering stunt, which they are now using, were prepared to sacrifice the Bill and the unemployed relief workers and their wives and eJiildren whom it assists. Atost of Afr. Cotterill’s other statements were so inaccurate that Air. Hogan chose to ignore them except the one that when certain other legislation was going through the House Air. Hogan voted with the Labour Party only once. Afr. Hogan said a glance et Mr. Holland’s “Lest We Forget” would contradict Afr. Cotterill most effectively. Afr. Hogan admitted that he was not as concerned as the Labour Party for the high salaried officer but neither was the intermitten working waterside worker at the Airport or in the Amin oho metal pit, or elsewhere. Afr. Hogan did display genuine, not. electioneering, concern for these men and the lower paid civil servants and pub-

lie servants, and these he had worked for and fought for, an instalment of proof of which would be found in “Lest We Forget,” and he himself could supply further instalments from Hansard. Mr. Hogan concluded by saying that Official Labour has not got a man in the House or out. of it who has done more for the workers than he has done.