The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1929. A POLICY OF HALT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 640, 17 April 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 1929. A POLICY OF HALT

POLITICAL courage may be either the valour of ignorance or the courageous virtue of accepting the advice of experts. That exhibited by the United Government in suspending the Palmerston North deviation for an indefinite period looks disagreeably like the former brand. If the Government could dispel unemployment as effectively as it prolongs enforced idleness by stopping jobs on which, large bodies of men are engaged, it would soon become a famous administration. A local parallel to the scheme guillotined in the Government’s latest exercise of slashing' tactics would be the Westfield deviation. Like the Westfield job, the scheme at Palmerston North has been classified for years as one of direct importance to the efficient operation of the railway system. . Over £200,000 has been spent on it, and for all the practical benefit it is now to serve the money might just as well have been cast into the sea. 11 o\v Six' Joseph Wai'd, with his reputation as a financier, is going to‘explain away waste of this grotesque character is a mystery. Cabinet has either proceeded upon the results of only a superficial investigation by laymen, or has been grossly misled upon vital points. On reaching Palmerston North the imposing squadron of Ministers flatly declined to hear deputations that might have expounded the local point of view. The deputatioiis may ox - may not have been favourable to the deviation. There is considerable disagreement on the sxxbject in Palmerston North because of the property interests involved. But the Government may thus have missed important guidance, and in any case it has demonstrated that it prefei-red to ignore the local viewpoint. The time lias arrived for some plain questions to he asked upon the position of the Government officials who, it would seem, “trim sail” to fit their ideas to the views of the Governments they are trying to serve. Last year Government officers heartily advised the Reform Government to proceed with the Taupo railway. This year, “on the advice of its officers,” the United Government has decided to drop it. In T 924, when the Reform Government adopted the Palmerston North scheme, some of its advisers must have been the men consulted by Cabinet within the past few weeks. Let us read what a special board of inquiry set up to examine conditions at the Palmerston North railway yard said in 1925: “In view of the motor competition and the necessity for quicker transport of goods, the efficient working of the shunting yards is essential. . . . The insufficient accommodation at Palmerston North makes it very difficult to handle the traffic in the busy season, and serious congestion results.” Sir Joseph Ward is wrong in stating that the work was only proposed in T 924. It was mooted several years before that, and the factors that prompted it—the danger to human life and the economic loss through congestion—are more pronounced than ever. The decline in goods traffic at Palmerston North is negligible, and must recover with the increasing output from the dairy farms of the district. As for the decline in passenger traffic, this is solely due to active competition from service-ears, and one leading reason why the car-owners have succeeded lies in the wretched state of the railway facilities at one of the most important junctions in the country. By submitting meekly to this competition the Government will allow still more passenger business at Palmerston North to slip through its fingers. The £33,000 it proposes to spend on the dilapidated station and constricted yards will not go far, and shunters at Palmerston North will continue to carry their lives in their hands. Meanwhile, the country is wondering when the Government will really initiate something, instead of merely stopping work at one place and starting it somewhei* else. The men engaged at Palmerston North are to be moved to other jobs, but what about the hundreds of unemployed waiting anxiously for the fresh billets that were promised ?

4 WINDOW-DRESSER FAILS

FOR the first time in a brilliant and an audacious career Mr. Winston Churchill has fallen into the too common political fault of being dull. A master showman, the ablest windowdresser in the world of political finance, has failed to win plaudits for perfect artistry. With his fifth, perhaps his final, Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer has reduced an attractive emporium with glittering front windows to the sombre level of a counting lioxxse.

So far, the hardest criticism against the pi-oduction is easily the weakest. In the House of Common* Mr. Philip Snowden, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first short-lived Labour Government, said with his characteristically cold bitterness that the Budget was the most shameless piece of pre-election bribery that had ever been presented by any political party. If there be any truth in the indictment then all that may be said about it is that the British electorate is most shamelessly easy to bribe. Cheap tea and liberty to bet without having to pay a tax for a freedom that, at its best, possesses dubious advantages, appear to be rather poor bait to catch twenty-five million voters. Of course, the advent of the so-called “flapper” vote this year and the remarkable extension of the afternoon-tea habit (even the Peace Congress in Paris ten years ago had to be adjourned for half an hour every day in order to allow the British and American delegates to enjoy their old-womanish indulgence) may have tempted the Government to abolish the tax on a beverage that is rapidly ousting beer and cocktails and thus surrender a revenue of £6,000,000 a year from a pouring soxxrce. But it is still doubtful whether the difference between Philip drunk and Philip sober will be a political difference in favour of Conservatism at the election polls. As for the abolition of the tax on betting, there is certainly no bribery iix the transaction. When the Plouse of Lords last month threw out the Crown’s appeal for enforcement of the State’s demand for payment of the Bets Tax in the Stadium Club’s case, it was obvious that the tax was doomed. The Court of Appeal had favoured the Inland Revenue axxthorities, but the law Lords flung the ricketty thing into fax-cieal impotence. It was shown at once that, in order to evade the law, the twelve thousand certificated bookmakei-s merely had to form clxibs and thus secure legal evasion. The Government’s easiest way oxxt of a ludicrous dilemma was to drop the tax as something not worth troubling about. It is not likely that gamblers, out of gratitude, will take their win as a bi'ibe and vote for the Government. In respect of Mr. Chxxrehill’s claim that the Government’s allegiance to soxxnd money had redxiced the cost, of living by 18 points, equivalent to a remission of £160,000,000 a year in indirect taxation, it is to be sxxspected that this dog will not round up many sti'aying sheep at the general election polls. The only good thing in Mr. Churchill’s dullest Budget is its solid evidence of Great Britain’s slow, but steady recovery from black economic and industrial depression. But that may not carry the Government back into stodgy power. Its only hope is to float in on a tidal wave of tea.