WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 15 May 1929, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

PIUME MINISTER’S TOUR.

t SEEING THE COUNTRY.

(Special Correspondent.)

WELLINGTON, May 13.

Sir Joseph Ward returned from his Taranaki tour on Friday morning and after attending to pressing business forthwith • was in bis office early on Saturday morning to dispose of routine work nod receive half a dozen deputations. In the evening he left by the ferry steamer to keep a number of engagements in the South Island and expects to be back in Wellington on Saturday next. During his TaranakiHawke’s Bay tour, extending over some 1500 miles by rail and car, he talked, so one of his travelling companions declares, between four and five hours a day, and listened attentively for nlm<».c. as long. Sir Joseph expresses himsell as delighted with his tour. Ho did not start out with any party or political intentions, he said in the course oil a hurried chat on Saturday afternoon: but be felt that lm should make liimseli better acquainted than be had been of late with the central part of the Nortji .Island and lie was more than pleased yvith what ho had'seen and learned during his excursion.

PROGRESSIVE TARANAKI

Sir Joseph' Ward bad hoi travelled through the Taranaki district at all thoroughly for some years previous to his trip last week, and lie was astounded, lie said, to see on every side the progress the province had made in the last fifteen or sixteen years. The whole face of the country bad been changed by the courage and enterprise of its people and one.could judge, without statistics, "that its output of produce had been enormously increased in the interval. It was not only the rural districts and their increasing outputs that marked this change. The centres of population, everywhere, testified to the energy and taste thenpeople. New Plymouth had doubled its population in a very few years, and looked to be preparing for the influx of another riwenty thousand in the near future. ' .The gratifying development of the whole province was due in a large measure, no doubt, to the veiy cordial relations that existed between the rural and urban people. Hawke’s Ray Sir Joseph had visited more recently, but here, too, lie found many marks of substantial progress.

LAND LEGISLATION

The “Evening Post,” is predicting that the Prime Minister and his Minister of Lands, the Hon. G. W. Forbes, will have a difficult task in piloting their foreshadowed Land Bill through the new Parliament. “In a two party House,” it reminds the two Ministers and the public, “ Messrs Soddori and M’Kenzie had no small difficulty in piloting through their policy Bills, and it becomes an interesting speculation how a minority Government in a threeparty House will run the gauntlet with a measure for compulsory land acquisition, in its way as contentious as a Licensing Bill. Apparently the -»overnmeut will have to go through Committee on stilts, resting one moment on the Labour leg, then on the Reform log. A percentages provision as above would probably be retainable only by Reform support, and the same could bo said df some other provisions of the Land for Settlements Act if they were copied into the new Bill.” All these lions may lie in their path, but at the moment the Ministers are not contcm- - plating them with alarm.

THE GOVERNMENT,

The trul hi is that just now the United Party is the most confident of the three sections of the House. Sir Joseph Ward and his colleagues are not boasting over muc-h, nor are They expecting .to obtain irom tlie new lailiament all they could wish; but tlie.v have up their sleeve the right of an appeal to the country, and if necessary the courage to exercise it. Hie Reform Party are so far apart that it is inconceivable they would join forces for the purpose of dcieating the United Party. •if the inconceivable happened it would be tan la mount to asking for a dissolution with the Uniter. Bai ty still in charge of 'llie affairs ov tlie Dominion. N'iiiier Reform no" Labour would have anything to gain from such a development which probably would bring back the United Party with a majority of the House at its back. The defeat of the Government’s Land Bill—presuming it ‘ were framed upon such lines as the Prime Minister has suggested—might prove the best thing that could happen to tlie party.