OTAGO RAILWAYS.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 399, 3 November 1876, Page 3

OTAGO RAILWAYS.

(' Hansard.') Mj\ de Laufcour in moving the motion standing in hiß name, was sure he would be consulting the wish of the House by confining himself to as few remarks as possible. At the same time, as this motion was placed on the Order Paper over a month ago, and was interrupted in its natural course by the Ministerial crisis they had Lad lately, he could not allow even the late period of the session to excuse liim from stating his views upon the subject m as concise terms as he could. He was hopeful that the Premier would relieve liirq in this debate by intimating that the Government would agree generally with the view expressed in the motion. Ho might say, at the outset, that the proposal oontained in the resolution for securing the construction of railways in the centre ot Otago had been consistently adhered to b- the Provincial Council of that provinco, ,v.J the step which the House was now asked to take had already been twice assented to by direct authority ' of the Provincial Council, There was this difference : that the Provincial Council passed resolutions asking this House to permit, he thought, something like Iwo million acres of land in the interior to be set aside, and not to interfere with the ordinary course of the waste land laws, but that the rents accruing from that area should be set aside as a special fund to repay the money that this House authorised or guaranteed to be raised by loan. It would be remembered that the House at that time refused to allow any ot the provinces to borrow money at all, and tho question that the Province of Otago raised through its

Council had again to be postponed. What was now asked for would, he thought, commend itself to the House for this reason s that the House had agreed that the land revenue of the provinces should be localised. And, having agreed to localise the land revenue of the provinces, he thought the House, so far as it interfered at all, should go no greater length than to see that the revenues derived from those lands were spent to the very best advantage. That was all he asked for in this resolution. He did not ask that any area of land should be forced into the market and sold at a sacrifice in ordes that certain works might be constructed ; but, haying in view the necessities of the colony, and the paramount necessity of affording facilities to outsettlera, he asked that the land, instead of being sacrificed as he was afraid it would be under the proposals now before the House for works along the coast, should first of all be devoted to the more sacred purpose of rendering the interior of value, so that people might live on it instead of sheep. In Otago, there was a very large interior which it was customary to condemn, and speak of as waste lands in the sense of inferior lands. But there was no real criterion of the value of land in Otago or anywhere, except the criterion of what people were prepared to do with the land. It was very well known that lands which only a few years ago were condemned quite as much as the lauds in the interior, were now being rushed by settlers upon the deferred payment system," ten and twenty deep, fop each section. That showed how careful they should be of the land in the interior, until they could, by placing it in communication with the markets, test what the real value was. It would be very disastrous if the interior lands, simply because surveyors said they were of such and such value, or situated at such and such an altitude, should be sacrificed to other purposes, while there was no money to construct railways so as to open them up and enable people to live upon them. The first duty of the House, in regarding the localisation of the Land Ifund as a settled question, was to see that the populous counties upon the coast shonld not, in order to relieve the ratepayers, bring pressure to bear upon the Government of the day, or the Waste Land Boards, to sacrifice all the interior before a population could live upon it. He knew it waß argued that, whoever might own the land, it would in the end be put to its legitmate purpose; but that was not a fair argument. Yet it was certainly true that, if the land in the interior was now sold to a few purchasers, as soon as the high price of produce induced other persons to make high offers for sections the land would be cut up so as to get more for it. If the holders found that they could get more from it by parting with it to such persons ns deferred payment tenants, they would part with it, instead of keeping it for the growth of wool. The question was, however, far too large for him to venture deeply into it that afternoon. He had no wish f o do so, but it was right he should state what had already been done in this direction. The interior of Otago, where these lands were situated, was not an unknown territory. The provincial authorities had obtained careful surveys of a great portion of the country ; and there were on record, in the pages of the Proceedings of the Council, estimates compiled by skilful and accurate engineers, giving, with very fair accuracy, the estimated cost of railways through these interior lands. When he told honorable members that some of these lines of railway were as much as sixty five miles in length, he thought it would be patent to the House that there were tracts of land in the centre of the province that could be devoted to settlement, and iu the "Superintendent of Otago pointed out, in his address to the Council, the advisability of meeting beforehand the desire which appeared to exist in the Council to force on works, so as not to force land hurridly into the market. In a yery few words, the Superintendent said,—" Instead 0 f forcing land into the market to pay for these lines, I would propose that power be applied for to the General Assembly at its next session to raise money on loan for their construction, upon the security of specific blocks of land." The Superintendent pointed out in 1874 what he (Mr. da Lautour) was now trying to - poiut out to the House by this resolution—the great wisdom of using the lands as legitimate security for t;he construction of railways to open them up, at the same time not constructing railways through the lands at greater cost than the security would justify rather than parting with these lands and not opening up communication with them. The Provincial Council was not unmindful of the wise advice of the Superintendent jn that occasion, and came to the House of Representatives with a resolution that such specific security should be offered for the construction of lines of railway, and offered to set aside two million and odd acres of land, which was allowed to be the property of the province, if the Provincial Council might be allowed to borrow, upon that security, and so to open up the country. The House, for reasons, no doubt, justifiable at the time, had to refuse the security. The province never asked for the security of the colony, but offered its own specific security in lands that belonged to itself. In 1873 the House sanctioned a course similar to that which he now proposed. In that year it was brought under the notice of the Provincial Council of Otago that it was yery desirable provision should be made by land in tlie Clutha district, to enable works to be constructed oh the Clutha River, so as to preserve that river as a means of navigation to the interior. The House set aside, by Act, 50,000 acres of Crown land as specific security, for the works. That was a very wise course. When the question was before the House, the Government of the day pointed out that they welcomed such a provision being made by the Province of Otago ; and in future, if the province came up in the same way and asked for reserves for specific works to make those reserves of value, the House would look on such a demand with favor, at least as far as the Government of the day could speak for it. The Province, however, was not content there. In 1875, surveys were made of lines of railway, and the result of the engineers' reports was that at the present time railways constructed through the interior of Otago would actually pay expenses, and leave a surplus even with the present produce and population of the interior, setting aside the fact that the land through which the railways went would be doubled in value in consequence of the opening of the railways.- The course which the Assembly seemed to be pursuing now was to allow population to take up the best land, and then the people brought pressure to bear upon the public treasuries to get works constructed, and the authorities came upon the general taxpayers for money to carry out works which raised these estates to as much as four or five times their original value. That was course which the House should on every possible occasion condemn. It was endeavored to be met in 1874 in the province in which he now asked for these reserves, and in a very sensible way: When the Provincial Council, through pressure from all the settled districts, was hurriedly forcing on railways to an extent beyond what the resources of the province would justify, the Provincial Secretary of the day insisted that certain rating resolutions Bhould be also earned, by which it was provided that in districts in which the proposed railways were constructed, there should be, first of all, a guarantee from the people that they would make up out of rates any_ deficiency that might be found on balancing the accounts at the end of tlio year—in other words that the people themselves whoso property would be enhanced in value should mako up the deficiency, and that the province should not be charged. He thought » »ystem of that sort should be adhered to ;

and that was the reason why.he could not support his honorable friend the member for Waikaia the other evening when he asked for a railway in a particular district where tli ere were large private properties. It was the duty of the Assembly to make State propeity valuable and suitable for population before it, enhanced the value of private estates at the expense of the general taxpayers. It was right that, in bringing this matter before the House, he should refer to the reports with reference to those main interior lines of railway which the engineers had made, basing their estimates upon the actual state of the country. He might remark, in passing, that the actual state of the country at the present time should not be considered for a moment with regard to proposals such as this. He could not perceive how the small population of the interior at the- present time should in justice be considered, or the views of a few towns and settlements, as against the wisdom of seeking for valuable results by putting a large population on the land in the future. Mr. Coyle, the Engineer, in his report, said, — " The annexed estimate of probable traffic has been based on statistics of population, official returns, and such information as I have been able to gather in the course of this survey, and may be taken as a fair estimate of the business that would be done by a railway constructed at the present time. The working expenses are calculated at rather more than twopence per train mile in excess of those on the southern railways for the past year, and the surplus, £1,779, will go to cover the cost of renewals not otherwise provided for." The engineer then gave figures with regard to the railway from Waihemo to Clyde, which might be taken as a fair average of the results of working the railways in the interior of Otago reported upon.- Mr. Coyle also. reported upon other lines, such as the Tuapeka and Beaumont, and the Teviot and Clutha ; but as the Waihemo and Clyde estimate might be taken as a fair average, he would read it to the House : Woolfor 50miles, averagetons, 1,960, at £ 25s 2,450 General merchandise, 60 miles, 8,000 tons at 30s ... 12,000 Coal, 50 miles, 3,000 tons at 255. 3,750 Passengers, 20 per day each way. 50 miles, at 2d. per mile ; number at 12,250 at Ss. 6d. 5,321 Sheep, cattle, and horses 2,500 Timber, 2,000,000 cub. ft., at Bs. 8,000 Gold, mails, and police 1,350 Parcels and contingencies, 10 per cent 3,537 w , . 38,908 Working expenses, per train mile per annum, 50,080 miles at ss. .. 12,520 _ , 26,888 Total cost of construction, £492,178, at 5 per cent. 24,609 Surplus £1,779 The real fact to be remembered was not that the line to be constructed would yield so much at present, but that the whole of the fine country through which it would run for 65 miles would be more than doubled in value to the Crown. These facts were well worthy of consideration. And in the form in which the resolution was worded no special railway was advocated—the matter was left entirely open to be decided by the wisdom of the local bodies in the future. It might be quite possible that the best way of opening up the interior would be by making use of the Molyneux River, and he would not say that it might not be shown, as the honorable member for Dunstan had often advocated— and_ he believed would advocate this session—if a careful survey of the Molyneux River were made, that for a very small expenditure that river could be navigated by small steamers right up to the Lakes. The best way to open up the interior might be to bring the railways downwards, and thus avoid the heavy expense incurred in the first twenty miles of the line leading into the. interior. They found from many of the reports that the interior itself was most favorably adapted for railway construction, for the expense would be very little over £2,000 per mile, and the portion that would be very costly would be the ten or fifteen miles necessary to connect with the present trunk line. He believed the Molyneux River was one of the finest highways that the country could possibly have. This resolution would, in setting aside the reserves, leave it perfectly free to the local bodies and to the Government in the future to consider in what way the proceeds from the land should be applied. There were statistics which justified the people of Otago in demanding that those reserves of their own land should be granted in order that the land might not be sacrificed, as he much feared would be the case under the proposals the House was considering. In efiect, they were asking the counties to scramble together to make the residue of the land as large as ever it could be, so that they might get a morsel. He would ask the House, who, under the Government proposals if they were passed, would come to the Assembly to try to preserve the lands ? The interest of every - local body in the country would be to eat up these lands as quickly as they could get the Waste Land Board to sacritice them This was, he considered, a very opportune time to press the resolution upon the House, and he hoped it would receive consideration, although he was aware he had not put the matter before the House as ably or as well as it should have been submitted. Motion made, and question proposed, " That this House will, to-morrow, resolve itself into a Committee of the whole, to consider of an address to His Excellency the Governor, requesting that he will cause provision to be made so that an area of waste lands of the Crown should be set aside in the Province of Otago, the proceeds of which, under the waste land laws in force or to be put in force, should be placed to a special fund as a guarantee for the payment of any moneys hereafter to be raised for the purpose of opening up the interior of the Province of Otago by main central railway." To be concluded in our next.