WELLINGTON TOPICS.
MEAT POOL. CONSTITUTION OF EXPORT BOARD. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, March 8. The delay in announcing the result of the stock and station agents’ ballot for the eighth member of the Meat Export Board has given rise to a rumor that the Government is not satisfied with the agents’ choice, and will refuse to ratify it under the Act. In doing this it would be quite within its rights, since the law leaves the final appointment entirely within its discretion. But having gone to tile length of submitting the appointment to a ballot, the Government would place itself in an extremely invidious position by refusing to acceut the nomination of ;i candidate said to have been selected by more than a three-fourths majority. It seems more likely that the delay in confirming the nomination is due to the absence of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Agriculture from town. The gentleman selected is the head of one of the largest stock and station agencies in the Dominion, and on personal grounds there could be no possible objection to his appointment. SOLDIER SETTLEMENT, r The Commissioner of Crown Lands and three members of the local .Land Board spent four days in the Wairarapa last week, and during that time man aged to inspect the holdings of eighty returned soldiers settled in the district. Their report is to the effect that under normal conditions the great majority of these settlers would have done well, but that under the conditions now prevailing many ofi them will require much more assistance than was contemplated when they were placed on the land. It is the old story with the old, old moral. Most of these" men took up their holdings with light hearts when butter-fat was worth over 2s a pound, and when those in authority were assuring them the price would hold for at least three or four years. But now it is down to 9d or Is a pound, and the value of the land producing it has declined in the same ratio. It is no good in hese circumstances telling the men what would have happened had boom prices continued. What they want to learn is how to meet with a much shrunken income nr. irreducible expenditure. MISMANAGED RAILWAYS. There is a great deal of genuine sympathy here with the protest against the mismanagement of the railways made by the commercial travellers at their conference in Christchurch yesterday. The grievance is a very old one with Wellington. Probably the province contains a larger proportion of users of the lines than does any other district in the Dominion, and there is scarcely a person within its borders that has not had occasion to grumble over th? service at one time or another. But the idea of selling the railways—which happily was abandoned by the commercial travellers —finds little* favor in this community. Nor are the existing troubles widely attributed to political influence. The popular opinion is the one by Mr. D. W. McLean at yesterday’s conference that the remedy lies in returning more commercial men to Parliament, men, that is, who would stand by the Government, independent of party, in applying sane business methods to all the public departments. Mr. Massey’s intentions in this direction have been admirable, but they remain only half fulfilled because the Prime Minister has not the knowledge and the push of business men behind him. SHADOW OF ELECTION. The Leader of the Liberal-Labor Opposition has snatched a few days from his professional labors during the last fortnight to make a hurried survey of the constituencies, and expresses himself as very well satisfied with the result. He thinks he sees in the attitude of the country a pretty general desire for more progressive legislation and more vigorous administation, with a readjustment of taxation and an effective land settlement policy. In the Auckland district, which hitherto has been a stronghold of Reform, there are marked indications bf a coming change, and the reports from the South are entirely satisfactory from the Liberal-Labor point of view. Mr. Wil ford does not expect the Hollandites and the Fraserites to come into the*new pro gressive fold, but he believes that their experience in Parliament brought them to realise that the hal. loaf, from their standpoint, is better than no bread, and that it is wiser to make progress slowlv than to continue to recede. Meanwhile, however, he is content to mind his own business and leave his friends to mind theirs.
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Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1922, Page 6
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750WELLINGTON TOPICS. Taranaki Daily News, 11 March 1922, Page 6
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