RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION POLICY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1588, 4 November 1912, Page 4

RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION POLICY.

No, doubt the Public Works Estimates, which were passed in the House in a couple of hours on Saturday morning,' would not have been altered by days of discussion. As in •past years,' the House knew nothing whatever of the merits of hundreds of the items passed: so long as the present system prevails, the House is helpless for _ the purposes of scrutiny-or criticism. From some observations dropped by Ministers, it_ is the Government's hope that this blind voting of millions of money,, on works the propriety of much of which is unknown to - anybody nearer Parliament.than.the ,se : partmental officialsy.has- taken place lor the last time. The House rnay therefore be held excused for its. silent acceptance Of votes which it .could not criticise and of which it knew nothing; but there is no excuse for its treatment of tho. Midland Railway vote. Had Mn. PearcE not forced a discussion upon the new vote of "£70,000 on this work by moving a reduction of £l, this wasteful scheme would have been treated, by silence, as one the desirableness of which is past all question. \Vo are convinced,, and everyone who knows anything of the country traversed by the lino , must also bo convinced, that whan the railway connection between Canterbury and Westiand is the railways loss will be increased by a largo sum every year. The line cannot pay for i a generation. No serious attempt has ever been made to show that it will' pay._ Indeed, when the Hurunui-Bluff line—built on level plains.and running,through thickly populated and ■ long-settled country —loses £100,000 a year, how can anything but a far greater proportional loss bo expected from an extraordinarily costly! line, running over barren plateaux and wiid mountains'!

An attempt was made. bv Sir' Arthur Guinness to show tnat the line would pay by Carrying the coal required by Canterbury, and, of all things,-the product'of a mountain of greenstone." Of courso the railway can obtain all tho coal traffic for Lyttelton if the_ rates are fixed low enough; but is it seriously contended that this enormously costly line Ban hope to pay its way when the cost of interest and working is deducted from the trifling sum which will -be derived from serving Canterbury's coal needs? The thing is absurd, on tho face of it. At the present time a heavy interest bill has to be paid, but it is better to suffer that burden than to ihcreaso it by pouring, out more money in order to establish an enterprise which will increase the annual loss. Mu. Pkarce's motion Was an exceedingly moderate pnd. He might with perfect propriety have moved to rcauco the vote as an indication that the line should not be proceeded with. He moved his motion, however, merely as an indication that an independent Board should be set up in. order to ascertain whether there was any possibility of the line paying. Nothing could bo more reasonable than that, and yet Mr. Pearce, who is to be congratulated on the stand he took in the public interest, could find only three supporters. We have heard a good deal of the necessity that railways should not be put in hand without proper investigation, but we are afraid that the violent rejection of the sound principle that the Government should know what it is doing when it spends the public funds is a bad augury for the future. If the Government, as appears to be suggested in the press i in the South, has evidence that the line will really : pay, that evidence should be made public. Nothing short of the independent inquiry asked for _ by Mr. Pearce-, however, will satisfy the public outside Canterbury and Westiand that tho Government is not nurturing a costly and unsound project for tho benefit of some people in those two provinces, When commenting on the Public Works Statement, we noted as ii grave omission the failure of the Minister to say anything which Slight encourage the tiopo that railway construction policy would have some basis in reason and in the public interest. The Government's refusal even to delay the prosecution of the Midland Railway works until inquiry had been mftde as to the wisdom of carrying the project through is not reassuring to the Jnends -of p-dminißtrativc rs<om,.

Reform voters look to the. Government to uphold the principle ( that public works expenditure should be made thoroughly national prudent and non-political by being made subject to definite rules based upon unand independent data as to what is ncccssary.