Untitled

Hokitika Guardian, 10 October 1931, Page 4

When the Prime Minister suggested in the House on Wednesday that money would not lie forthcoming for the continuance of lines condemned by the Railway Board he really spiked the guns of the advocates of the various railway lines. " The position is a very difficult one, and rather more difficult for the Prime Minister himself than for his colleagues, comments the Christchurch “Times,” because he has continuously and sincerely advocated the completion of the South Island Main Trunk line. As the head of the Government, however, he had to accept the finding of the Railway Board and he felt the futility of seeking a loan to finance a work that the Board declared to be unprofitable. Clearly, in these circumstances, Parliament could reject the report only if it desired the lines to be continued for the relief of unemployment, and the question would then arise whether they constituted the most profitable works on which the money could be spent. It is, of course, an accepted maxim that the wisest forms of relief expenditure are, first, capital works that will be immediately interest-earning and then capital works that will ultimately be productive, thomr" may never earn their full share of interest. Railway works may come into one or other of the'-e classes, but ft is necessary to take into consideration, in the second class, the magnitude of the disparity between capital cost and earning power. It is certain that on the figures of the Railway Board the condemned lines would not pay their way, even if liberal allowance we' e made for the element of community benefit, and clearly that Board could not be expected to take over the completed lines at their true capital cost. It is in our mind that with the growth of population and perhaps with revolutionary changes in the haulage system the lines will become profitable propositions and will hie completed, but in the meantime' we have to accept the fact under existing conditions that the Dominion cannot find the sums necessary.