WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 26 April 1921, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

PUBLIC WORKS EXPENDITURE. PROVINCIAL JEALOUSIES. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, April 22. The old time parochial jealousy between Wellington and Auckland has not entirely disappeared before the slowly developing national sentiment of recent years. The political capital still grudges Auckland its rapid commercial and industrial growth, and the “Queen City” still resents the centralisation tendency towards Wellington. The first fact was demonstrated at the annual meeting of the Central Progress League here the other evening, when one of the speakers roundly asserted that Auckland obtained more than its fair share of public works expenditure by demanding what it wanted at the point of the bayonet, so to speak, ''if Ministers did not give Auckland whit it required, he implied Auckland insisted upon a change in the constitution of the Cabinet. The Minister responsible for the preparation of this year’s public works estimates declines to discuss these allegations for publication, but he points out that the Government’s policy of confining expenditure to works of the greatest urgency has no provincial application, and is simply imperative in view of the financial stringency.

SOUTH ISLAND TRUNK. That Wellington takes no broader view of this question than its neighbours do, may be judged from the fact that its newspapers persistently argue that the larger earnings of the North Island railways, that work on the South Island lines should cease altogether, and that expenditure should be practically confined to the lines on this side of Cook Strait. They ignore the fact that until the completion of the Main Trunk between Auckland and Wellington the earnings of the North Island lines, though assisted by the through lines to New Plymouth and Napier, were not so satisfactory as those of the South Island lines. It is not unreasonable to suppose, however, that if the connection between Picton and Christchurch were completed a'nd an adequate ferry service established across the Straits, a very large amount' of profitable traffic would be diverted from the sea route to the .railway.

DEFENCE UP-TO-DATE. The Hon. H. F. Wigram, who is offering three substantial prizes for essays on the use of aircraft in the defence of the Dominion, already has devoted time, money, patriotic zeal, and robust common sense to the subject he is anxious to see occupying the serious attention of the public. Some years before the war he was urging in the Legislative Council—from which he has retired, substantially to the loss of the country—-the use o-f aircraft as auxiliaries to the Dominion’s other means of defence, and during the war he was the moving force the flying school'at Sockburn, which turned out a large number of eager young airmen who acquitted themselves with distinction at the front. It is the efficiency of aircraft, even more than the comparatively small cost of this means of defence, that appeals to Mr. Wigram, but when it is remembered that New Zealand’s single light cruiser is costing it a quarter of a million a year, the taxpayers well may be attracted by his secondary argument. MUST NOT INSIST.

One of the members of a deputation that waited upon the acting Prhne Minister on Wednesday to urge that the Government should find work for a number of returned soldiers and others that were being thrown out of employment by the “hard times,” was unfortunate enough to use the word “insist.” The deputation, he said, must insist upon the Government doing its duty. Sir Francis Bell noted the word, and when he rose to reply to the representations of the deputation, he stated in measured terms, much more suggestive of sorrow than of anger, that it was an improper one to address to the acting head of the Government or to any other Minister. The deputation would be quite within its rights in insisting upon turning the Government out of office, but it must not insist upon a. Minister following a line of action his judgment did not approve. The rebuke by its very courtesy obviously impressed the members of the deputation. “Insist” is a word that must be avoided by future suppliants.