MAIN HIGHWAYS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume L, Issue 3986, 20 August 1929, Page 2

MAIN HIGHWAYS.

MAINTENANCE CONTRIBUTIONS. EX-MINISTER’S CONCERN. The seriousness of the omission from this year’s Estimates of the State’s annual contribution of £35,000 towards the maintenance of main highways was emphasised by M|i\ K. S. Williams, ex-Minister of Public Works, in the course of his Budget Debate speech in the House of Representatives on Thursday. Mr. Williams asked the Prime Minister to inform the House how he was able to exclude that amount without making an alteration to the original Main Highways Act, which prescribed that the sum in question was each year to be transferred from the Consolidated Fund to the revenue fund of the Main Highways Board. “That amount,” said Mr. Williams, “has not been provided, notwithstanding the fact that the Act definitely states that it is to he provided, and I should imagine that if it were not thought necessary to provide it an amendment of the Act would have been necessary before the credit could have been discontinued. I would also like the Prime Minister to indicate what the proposals are with reference to the £200,000 and the interest. It is rather vague as stated in the Budget, but I do not consider that there is any justification whatever for interfering with the Main Highways funds, at any rate until we have the report of the Transport Committee which, I understand, is to report on transport questions generally throughout the country. “If the highways funds are in good order —and it is a good thing if they are —I think the direction in which they should be spent is in declaring more secondary highways in various parts of the Dominion. That is the direction in which the board is supposed to function, in giving assistance to the back-block settlers, as by relieving county councils of as much mileage as it is possible to take over from them, if allows them more money to devote to conditioning and keeping in order the baek-'filock roads used by the settlers.” In reply to an interjection, Mr. Williams said the petrol tax was allocated in the first place with the idea of improving, the main roads leading to the cities in order to provide' pleasure trips for city dwellers and to bring.business into the cities and to enable the Highways Board to take over more roads; and those additional roads were called secondary roads. That was the direction in which the board should function when it had plenty of funds. There was plenty of room for it to do so, instead of diverting the money into the Treasury or anywhere else. Mr. Williams asked the Prime Minister to enlighten the House as to what the Government proposed to do in regard to highway funds, because the proposal was rather /vague, and looked like an attack on the money received from the motorists on the one hand and on that received by the ratepayers on the other.