RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 83, 24 August 1912, Page 4

RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION.

It is not always that \vc can find ourselves in agreement with the views expounded by the Ministerial organ in Wellington, but the other day it had something sensible to say • about the need for transforming the whole system f of railway construction. Of course, its political rancour obtruded itself between its lines, but there can l>e no denying its assertion that under the old regime railways were often 'built not because they should have been built but because it was deemed by the party in power politically expedient to build them. The Liberal administrations "were not greater sinners in this respect than their Conservative predecessors, though our friend the Dominion does not mention the fact. As a result, to quote our contemporary, there are to-day lines that need never have been built, and unrailed areas the railing of which "would greatly benefit I the whole country; and as a result of that the working of the railways system has annually yielded a heavy loss. Instead of the haphazard and political I tinkering with the general problem of railway construction, the Government, says the Dominion, should work along j some clear lines and according to definite principles. Our contemporary goes on to refer to the log-rolling that is continually going on to obtain votes 1 for railways, good, bad and indifferent, and, speaking of the manner in which the Massey Government has dealt with some , recent demands, says:— ] "Although nobody could expect the 1 new Government to name r off-hand all its railway construction projects, erery- I body had a right to expect that the Prime Minister would say something to indicate his contemplation of some remedy for the hand-to-mouth system of construction which has led to such a deplorable waste of public money. Just now Parliament has before it the fate of the very worst fruit of the bad system of making railway construction a thing to be moulded by pressure from all the districts able to exercise pressure. We refer, of course, to the Midland Eailway. in considering the petition of the tunnel contractors, Parliament should take the opportunity of considering the whole problem of construction. Mr. Massey mentioned that the claims of Otago for new railway construction would not suffer frfe: Ministerial ignorance of the districts for which railways were asked. Mr. Fraser, he said, was thoroughly acquainted with the districts and their requirements. Nobody will doubt that that is'-so; but does Mr. Fraser or anyone elie know all the requirements of all thn', districts in the whole country? Oj course nobody could have such knowledge. \ No attempt has ever been made in the past to take a survey of the country as a whole, and nothing short of such a survey, by competent investigators, will furnish even the data preliminary to the consideration of a national policy of railway construction. There can be no argument against the feasibility of such a broad treatment of the subject: if it is possible to determine one way or the other the case for a railway in any district, it is equally possible —•and it is obviously necessary-—to do the same for the whole of New Zealand. Deputations to Ministers can do no more, i actually than acquaint the Government with a fact which it knew beforehand and which everyone knows by instinct, namely, that certain districts desire railways. They always do desire them, and always will. Not the desires of the districts, however, but the necessities or the nation, 'Should direct the custodians of the nation's purse. Experience has taught us not to expect too much from Royal Commissions, or we should suggest a Royal Commission on Railway construction policy. But there are ways and means which, if not a definite programme, at any rate a definite construction policy for some years ahead could be drawn up and established. The Government should give some specific assurance that it means in this very important matter to protect itself and the nation from local log-rolling and secj tibnal pressures."

There is a national note struck here, and one that should find general acceptance; Probahly there is no country under the sun where the deputation habit has got .such a strong hold as it has in New Zealand. Deputationising the powers that he is now regarded as the proper thing: the only way, in fact, in which the needs of a district can be represented and satisfied, and consequently there is during every session a stream of deputationists to Wellington worrying tired members' and Ministers, frittering away public and private gold in expenses, and generally doing as much good as could be done by a written statement of the position. This deputationising curse should be removed at the earliest possible moment, and the suggestions of our contemporary if given effect to would go a long way in this direction.