The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons. FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1921. PUBLIC WORKS’ METHODS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 609, 18 February 1921, Page 4

The Times. Published on Tuesday and Friday Afternoons.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 1921. PUBLIC WORKS’ METHODS.

“We nothing extenuate, nor aught set down in malice.”

To-morrow it will be exactly seven years since the Prime Minister turned the first sod of the PaerataWaiuku branch railway. Twelve miles of easy country, roaded fairly, with a railway line as a feeder at one end and water carriage at the other, had to be traversed. At the same time the trans-continental Australian railway from Adelaide westward for 1063 miles was begun. That line was completed In three and a-half years. After double the time our little branch line is still far from ready to be handed over to the Railway Department. We do not claim that our local line by any means stands as a record of the futility of the Public Works Department, for we have no doubt that examination would show half a dozen others that would run it a dead heat, but it has been constructed under the eyes of hundreds of our readers, and must appear to them as a monument of the incapacity and wicked extravagance of a department that would have it in its power to do so much for the progress of the Dominion if it only possessed a quarter of the energy and efficiency that private enterprises must display—or go bankrupt. However, the line will be finished at long length, for the unfortunate taxpayer is still squeezable. It will have cost perhaps double the estimate, with perhaps a small matter of £15,000 added to that as interest on the idle money spent up to the date of opening. And then will follow the inevitable sequel. When it is handed over to the Railways Department, it will be weighted with an initial cost that will make it impossible for interest to be earned on it. Added to that the new controlling department may have to spend thousands upon alterations, for it is a well-known, though almost incompi’ehensible fact that the standard of public works is lower than that of railways, and bridges have generally to be strengthened and curves straightened out before the latter department will risk running, their trains. We do not know what can be done with the Public Works Department. It appears to be permeated with dry-rot from top to bottom. We hear a good deal about “go slow” in other industries, but public works appears to harbour the microbe of the African sleeping sickness, and we do not believe there is a man in New Zealand strong enough to rouse it from its lethargy. Therefore, we say we do not know what ! can be clone about it, but we do know ; that if the taxpayers of New Zealand generally knew as much about its methods as the peop’e live g Paerata and Waii’ku do, t 1 o foment that did not either mend it or end it very prompDy would speedily bo hustled off the Treasury benches.