RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 137, 6 December 1929, Page 13

RAILWAY WORKSHOPS

%ROSS EXTRAVAGANCE

Speaking at Waiwetu last night, Mr. J. Kerr (United) said that Sir Joseph Ward was to be commended for having stopped the big political railway scheme known as the TaupoTotara railway, and the unnecessary Palmers ton North deviation. He had shown the hand of a master, and had saved the country £,750,000 at one stroke of the pen, as it were. Let the electors compare with that tho railway policy of the Reform Party. The Reformers had derided to reorganise the railway workshops, and had brought down a scheme estimated to cost £1,880,000, but its actual cost had been £2,279,000; or £399,000 more than tho estimated, while men of long experience stated that all that was necessary was to spend a few thousand pounds on providing up-to-date machinery, and the railway workshops would have served for many years to come. A Royal Commission, he declared, should be set up to make a searching inquiry into that gross extravagance on the part of the Reform Government. (Applause.) The estimated cost of the new 7-ailway workshops in their district, for example, was £362,000, but the actual cost had been £777,000; or an excess of £.210,000. Such huge discrepancies should not be tolerated, and a full inquiry should be insisted upon. (Applause.)

"The effect of the Government's railway construction policy is that the

workshops at Petono are being starved," declared Mr. H. V. Johnston Reform candidate for the Hutt seat, in" las speech at Moera last night. "The money is going to unskilled labour for the building of white elephants in the South Island," he added. "That is tho result of embarking upon heavy financial undertakings without a proper inquiry. The outcome will bo that our rolling stock will go back, and it will take millions to restore it."