A LINE FOR OPUNAKE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 869, 15 July 1910, Page 6

A LINE FOR OPUNAKE.

NO GOVERNMENT "SHIBBOLETHS" ' WANTED. (By Telegraph—Special Reporter.) Hawera, July 13. For many years there has been an. agitation in Taraiiaki for a railway froni Opunake to the main line. Routes to various junctions .have been suggested, and years ago the Government purchased a reserve for a railway, which would run from Opunake and join tho main line between Eltham and To Roti. At the luncheon hold in the Opera House today, in connection viith tho Hawera Winter Show, several speakers referred to tho need of a line to relieve, the roads, which were carrying great quantities of dairy produce and other heavy traffic.

Mr. G. V. Pearce, M.P. for Patea, declared that such , a railway would pay 10 per cent, at least. He had heard that tho Hawera County Council was striking •a road, rate of id. in the JSl'. which meant Gs. 3d. on land valued. at ,£SO.

Mr. 'E. I>. Barton, Mayor of Hawera, in proposing "The Ministry of the Bominion," also advanced the contention that there should be a railway to c<iter for -the dairying industry, and to relieve the main roads, the cost of upkeep of which was so great that, in the course of time, if things were allowed to proceed ns at present, there would be an absolute breakdown in local bodies' iimuiccs. The Ministry had flirted .with the question of the railway; the Government's replies were shibboleths and nonsense, but the people did want that railway, for which there had been a reserve i'or 30 years. He hoped llie Minister present would realise that the people of South Tnranaki were not going to be trill"! with in this matter.