TAUPO RAILWAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 719, 19 July 1929, Page 7

TAUPO RAILWAY

m JUSTIFICATION FOR WORK MR. FORBES STATES VIEWS IIBE SUE'S Parliamentary Reporter) PARLIAMENT BLDG., Thursday. Claiming that there was no justification for ever starting the work, the Minister of Lands, the Hon. G. W. Forbes, placed his views cn the Rotorua-Taupo railway before the House of Representatives this evening. rpHE land the railway was to open - 1 up, he said, was largely fern, scrub and titree. However, in visiting the district to ascertain the timber possibilities, Mr. Forbes said he had found that there was already a slump in the trade, so that if that were one of the arguments advanced in support of the railway, there was not much harm in postponing the project for a few years. Tha Minister said a very dismal tale as to settlement prospects had been given to him at Reporoa, which was on the route ot the proposed railway, and which was said to be about the pick of the Taupo land. Returned soldiers there had had their values written down. Yet even now they were not optimistic as to their chances of making good. A pamphlet had been issued which had described the abandonment of the railway as a "crime.'’ The Minister said, however, that he understood the gentleman largely responsible for the pamphlet owned land behind Reporoa. He believed there were possibilities in the pumice land, but they should not be over-boomed. The Government proposed to take a block of the land and see what could be done with it, but a good deal depended upon whether the right kind of people were placed on that land.