MR. TAVERNER MAKES UP HIS MIND

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 875, 20 January 1930, Page 8

MR. TAVERNER MAKES UP HIS MIND

THE Minister of Railways, the Hon. W. B. Tavernei-, has at last reached a decision upon the Morningside tunnel. It is about the first straight-out decision on any definite question of major policy that Mr. Taverner has so far been guilty of giving. Somehow it seems a great pity that Mr. Taverner was so careless as to allow a fine record of mdecisioix to be marred on a question like this, when by the exercise of a little ingenuity he might have gone on vacillating and “stalling” as he has done on other important questions, notably the Paeroa-Pokeno railway, for at least a period of months. However, Mr. Taverner has made up his mind. That, in the meantime, is an event of first-rate political significance. The Minister does not, however, claim to have made up his mind unaided. Instead he called to his aid a committee of departmental experts. This woxild be eminently reasonable but for the current suspicion that in reporting on mattei-s of predetermined policy a committee of departmental experts is as clay in the potter’s hands. Its opinions and data must fit the preconceived views of the Government. There is no other explanation for the extraordinary reversals of “expert opinion” in such cases as the Taupo railway, the Palmerston North deviation, the Pieton-Christchurch railway, and now, to complete an impressive list, the Morningside tunnel. In every one of these, and in none of them less than in the last, considered opinions actually published in black and white and on record in official papers are the exact opposite of those on which the Government is now shaping its policy. The set of reasons which Mr. Taverner gives iix support of his decision are defective in this respect, that they are too convincing. They are like the criminal’s perfect alibi, which of its own pei-feetion engenders suspicion. As far as the public is concerned, there will be no great heartburning. Nobody particularly waixted the tunnel except the regxxlar suburban travellers, who can easily transfer their patronage elsewhere. It is in the internal working of the department, and in the financial result of its operations over the northern sectoi-, that the chief influence of the decision will be seen. The txinnel was badly wanted to redxiee haulage costs and give a quicker and more convenient goods and passenger service to the north. Those facts are xxndeniable, and all the ingenuities of Mr. Taverner and his plastic experts cannot escape them.