TWO PROBLEMS

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 59, Issue 71, 26 April 1930, Page 4

TWO PROBLEMS

Most people, we imagine, will congratulate Sir Joseph Ward 011 the fact that the financial statement for the past year discloses a surplns of £150,000, showing that the Finance Minister gauged fairly accurately the receipts and expenditure for the twelve months and was able to finish up the period with a substantial balance to his credit. The statement is one every New Zealander should closely peruse, for it sets out in a very comprehensive and simple manner the main sources of our revenue and the avenues in which the chief amounts of expenditure are being operated. It is chiefly in connection with the problems of uneraployment and land settlement that we wish to confine whatever comments we may make in connection with the country's finances. These, in our opinion, are the two most vital questions hefore ihe people of this Dominion and are of such urgency that they will have to be given the closest attention and consideration by our legislators at the earliest opportunity. It is gratifying to observe the concern with which the Finanee Minister approaches the question of unemployment and his Government's determination to prosecute, a vigorous land settlement policy. "In connection with unemployment," says Sir Joseph, "every endeavour is being made to foster • a farming spirit, to have more land trought under cultivation, obtain the closer settlement of the existing farm lands, and generally to assist the farmer to increase the total production of primary produce." Possibly the greatest achievement tbis Government has performed is the remarkable amount of assistance it has provided for settlers under the Advances to Settlers Act. Since the Government assumed office loans to settlers authorised in this period totalled nine and a half millions, including £5,195,000 to 4386 settlers and £4,345,000 to. 5170 workers. In the last year actually £6,920,000 was paid over, constituting a record for the office, of which the Minister for Finance will feel eminently gratified. As Sir Joseph Ward points out, this assistance has undoubtedly aided in carrying out the Government's policy of closer settlement. What the country undoubtedly requires is more people on the land apd especially on all those vast tracts of country throughout New i Zealand which are unoccupied qnd undeveloped. The Government forsees far-reaching economic changes in this respect, for a large portion of the statement is based on a policy of attempting a solution for unemployment and bringing about a comprehensive land settlement policy. So far as unemployment is concerned, it cost the country last year the sum of £1,412,500, to say nothing of the enormous amounts that were expended in various localities by local authorities in attempts to .minimise this ever-recurring evil. It is the firm conviction of many people that these huge sums could be better expended in giving more permanent benefit to the country as a whole, of concentration upon a policy of a nature that would bring about a more definite solution of our unemployment difficulties. Herein, we believe, lies tremendous scope for the eombinqd brains of our legislators. To what extent, then, can this country eoncentrate its thousands of idle hands upon its millions of acres of unoccupied, undeveloped and idle lands? In our opinion the two problems present possibilities each for the solution of the other.