The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1948. PUBLIC WORKS

Grey River Argus, 14 April 1948, Page 4

The Grey River Argus WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1948. PUBLIC WORKS

JT is a strange, and in some ways a. laughable line which the National arty and its henchmen have latterly taken on the subject of State enterprise and of Government spending. Their usual attitude is that both are very excessive. In Parliament and in caucus they accuse the Government of monopolising too much labour. When there were, even in this district, several collieries with their fate in the balance, and the disposition of their private owners to sky the towel threatened this community with a loss of not. only a means of employment, but of payable trades, this Government was denounced as a squanderer of public money because it bought those collieries and kept them in production. It did more when it began prospecting so as to extend the scope and the amount of West Coast production. There admittedly were no local complaints, in any camp, when the . Government completed a first-class highway from here to Hokitika., State houses also were welcomed in several towns. There has been only a little quibbling at the prospect of the miners’ hostel which is next week being opened in Reefton. where collieries in the adjacent area owe a new and enlarged future to Government expenditure. One reason for the hostel is, of course, its necessity if the mines are to have an adequate supply of labour. When the same consideration, however, prompts the Government to provide at the ports better accommodation for the workers, there are Nationalist .sympathisers to . suggest, that other people should have prior consideration. Yet the Opposition have long been lamenting elsewhere a desire lor more labour throughout the country. It therefore is an amusing political twist when they begin a. cry that the North Island is belter supplied, not only with workers, but with Government enterprise than the South Island. Further than this, the new tune is that the South Island is languishing, because private enterprise is unable to keep it in step with the other island, and that consequently the .State ought to redress the balance with a much bigger outpouring of public money. The Leader of the National Party says he now looks to the State to make up leeway in the South Island by extra expenditure upon transport, industry, and other things so as to increase the population. His vaunted faith in capitalism is in this respect rather conspicuous by its absence. His party to-day is ready to capitalise upon promises that it would please South Islanders Avith no end of public works. The idea in this simply is Io exploit the credulity of organisations or local bodies. The thing is taking shape so openly as 1o deceive nobody else. It is a party strategem. But it is also something of a joke. One city wants to be cock of the walk in the matter of air transport. Others don’t give a tinker’s cuss whether it ever becomes a great terminal, and one other reckons it has a better claim. In this district there happens to bo in progress the largest aerodrome -construction project in the island, but it is discounted in certain quarters for reasons not avowed. Instead; the public is asked to believe that a thing of greater importance "is a mountain reading project such, as would probably render another province the focus for the glacier tourist traffic. This idea looks to be entirely in line with the new orientation of the National Party, and it strangely has as one advocate a proponent of large State expenditure at this end of the district to improve the water supply. Is this stunt a signal for an erstwhile standard bearer that the National Party has other fish to fry, and that he can regai’d his own cake as so much dough? A while ago the talk used to be of a road to Jack-

son’s Bay, and now it is a road between Otago and the South Westland scenic region. Would it not betoken more acumen in any aspirant for public leadership to recognise that the Haast Pass job is precisely of that type which should be reserved for a time when the demand for labour might slacken, and when any surplus thereby could be economicly utilised? Nor does it enhance the suggestion that labour should be withdrawn from work affordin'" a quicker return to say it is not the only one to be done immediately with Government money in the province. Materials as well as labour are meantime required’ for work of the utmost urgency. It is not stated which of these should be dropped, but it is implied that others should simultaneously be initiated, which amounts to the same thing as a, diversion of labour from present undertakings. It is not merely a case of using up some labour that might be available, but of co-ordinating with it a deal more which obviously is not available. .Nobody expects our output of gold, timber and coal- to go over the Haast Pass, but everybody is interested in seeing an increased output In the past decade the West Coast, like in other parts of the country, has grown in prosperity, and the same holds for the South. Island generally. The other island certainly has advanced relatively faster in population, and if the politicians, whether embryo or hard boiled, who are complaining wore consistent, they would criticise South Island private enterprise rathe]’ than make lavish promises on the basis of State expenditure.