GOVERNMENT ROAD VOTES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VI, Issue 490, 10 August 1912, Page 5

GOVERNMENT ROAD VOTES.

FACILITATING THE WORK. EARLIER PARLIAMENT URGED. The matter of securing an improvement in the issuing of authorities to local bodies tu expend votes on roads works was brought up in the House this week. Mr Mander, who is a country representative, requested that the authorities should be issued earlier in the year than has been the practice hitherto. A question ,on similar lines was previously put by Mr C. K. Wilson, member for Taumarnnui, who is thoroughly acquainted with the drawbacks occasioneu by delay in issuing the necessary authorities to the local bodies. During the discussion on the subject members on both sides of the House urged that the issue of authorities should be facilitated.

The remedy, declared the Hon. W. Fraser, is that Parliament should meet earlier, ,and rise earlier and thus enable the worn to be done at the proper time of the year. What, he wag his position with a million and a half applications for % votes for several millions of money? As Minister for Public Works he, for one, was not going to take the responsibility of saying what authorities should be issued before he was satisfiied: Turning to the members of his own party, he said be hoped members would realise that so long as Parliament met when it did it was almost inevitable there would be delay in starting the work. He assured the House that he would do everything he could to hasten the authorities and facilitate the starting of the works. He would say, in justice to the previous administration that whilst at one time there had been delay, and he certainly could not complain that the time taken between the granting by Parliament and the issuing of authorities had recently been unreasonable. As far as the future was concerned he would try and facilitate matters, but at present he did-not see how it was possible to do it. Sir Joseph Ward declared that members opposite should put their hand on their hsarts after what the Minister had said when they remembered statements they had made. They had told the people in the back blocks that the' Government bad been responsible for keeping the authorities back. The Minister'was quite right; it was due to the late period at which Parliament met; that was caused because some

members could not leave home to come to Wellington earlier. (Dissent). The party opposite had made great political capital out of this, and now they had to take the answer of their Minister, and recognise how unfair they had been in the past.