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Hokitika Guardian, 23 July 1924, Page 2

Thf. County Councils of the Coast arc being asked to assemble at Greymouth the week after next to consider in conference, the effect of the report of the lloyal Commission as affecting timber royalties. The full report now to hand is not any more helpful to the local bodies than the precis first telegraphed through. It would appear that the Royal Commission places the bolstering up of an expensive experimental general Government department before the fate of established local government. Local bodies which have had tlio benefit of certain revenue for over twenty years—revenue which was appropriated to them in the place of the Crown revenue—are to lose that, income, despite the fact of Parliamentary action in the past. With the knowledge that the revenue was secured to the local bodies by statutory provision, the communities have Iteen building on tlio prospect of assured revenue from the source for long years to come. Yet bv tlio sudden development of a new policy, largely experimental. the revenue is to be taken from the local bodies, and Commissioner and Ministers beat about the bush as to what, might take its place. The burden of it all is to fall upon the ratepayers behind the local liodics; for it is the people themselves who are hit hy the sweeping action of the Government m this matter. Tin 1 people of tlu* Coast in particular are seriously affected by the policy now developing. A casual glance at the maps accompanying the report, slioa.s the vast area of timber country in the County districts. The bulk of it is centred on the, Coast. The tables attached to the report indicate also where the, hulk o! the value is in timber royalties—the Coast again. But this great sum for material developmental purposes is to lie taken from the local bodies and is to pass to the Government which will then be relieved of propping up the costly organised State Finest Service. flunking to the future not only with depleted revenues, but with vast tracts of country locked up, the Coast is going to lie ill a worse plight as aifootiug natural progress than It was in the days when tile .Midland Railway reservations .Ijockeil up the dl.ftriid for settlement, ami held the countryside back. That however was a passing phase, even though it lasted a decade or so, hut now the Forest leservations promise to lie for all time, and this retrograde step, coupled with the appropriation of the revenue, means a period of indefinite stagnation. As the matter is shaping itself the local bodies are going to be reduced to n state of stringency which will make it mure difficult than ever to cany on, except hy piling more rates on the people. Revenue is being filched (as one Councillor put it) from the local hollies, and is being done deliberately in a rather underhand way. and certainly by ignoring tlio law mid promises in tho past. We shall be surprised if the protest made by the local bodies is not one which will arrest the attention of the whole Dominion,