THE CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE.

Observer, Volume 6, Issue 146, 30 June 1883, Page 227

THE CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE.

The race of Tite Barnacles is not extinct. Eidiculed out of the Home Department, the tribe has emigrated to the colonies. The history of the negotiations between the Thames . Valley and Rotorua Railway Company discloses a complicated net-work of red tape circumlocution and official Tite Barnacalisrn. It is one series of Ministerial shuffling and subterfuges, a fussy pretence of doing a vast deal, and doing as little as possible. The plain unvarnished statement of the case is this : The Government cannot, and would not if they could, construct the Thames Valley and Rotorua Railway, and they make no secret 'of the fact. The Company and the land owners together, European and native, are willing to undertake the work, and to find the means, but the Government blocks the way. There is no question as to the desirability of the railway itself. The Premier professes to be anxious to "facilitate the arrangements necessary to insure its construction," the Minister of Lands expresses the readiness of the Government to enter into arrangements with the native for the cession of lands in return for the railway, and to apj)oint a sitting of the Native Land Court with that object, but after nearly six months of wearisome negotiations, memoranda- writing, and interviewing, the directors find themselves precisely in the pos ition in. which they started.

Under pretence of reserving the Thermal Springs for the public benefit, the Government have succeeded in shutting up nearly three quarters of a million acres of land from bona fide % settlement. The company having ascertained that the native owners, with their natural shrewdness, are anxious to promote the construction of the railway by ceding portions of thoir land, and benefit by the enormously enhanced value that would be given to the remainder, ask the Government to avail itself of certain powers which it possesses under the Thermal Springs Act, to remove the existing empediment, of the Government's own making, between the two contracting parties. This, however, the (Government, while all the time profuse in expressions of sympathy and promises of assistance, declines to do, though it actually has no more right to maintain its veto over the • land against the express wish of the natire owners, than any outside party has a right to step into a merchant's office and prohibit a legitimate bargain between the merchant and his customer.

: «—- . We have carefully perused the report of the directors to the shareholders, -which- details' the patient' endeavours which hare been made to induce the G-orernmenfc to abandon' iiskdog-in-the-

mangel-like attitude, and' a iinOre, melancholy record of. Ministerial aisingeriuousness and evasiveness we,, have seldom read. ' We" will, briefly review the; leading features in these negotiations. ■The directors, having ascertained that the natives were anxious to have the railway made, fully recognising the enormous advantages they would : derive from it, and that haying no money to give or subscribe, they were willing to make free cessions of land, or larger grants on condition of receiving half the profits from the sales, submitted a memorandum in February last to the Government setting out the proposals of the company, pointed out the necessity of a terminus at Rotorua to make the line remunerative, to " render the territory of the district available for settlement by Europeans, and beneficial to the Moari owners 'of. the land," two objects which the Government professed to have mainly in view in passing " The Thermal Springs Act," and finally requested the Government' to exercise the powers which it undoubtedly possessed, of fixing the terms and donditions on which the land was to be ceded, and . acting as agents between the contracting parties, so as to protect their mutual interests.

Some days afterwards Mr Eolleston replied that the Government was endeavouring to ascertain the wishes of the natives in regard to the company's proposals, and when this was accomplished •would be in a position to consider proposals from the company. Mr Bryco also replied in a memorandum to the effect that, so far as the objects of the company were coincident with the interests of the native owners and the promotion of settlement, the company and the Government had objects in common. On the Bth March the directors complain that, in the then indefinite state . of the negotiations with the Government, they could not proceed with the second section of the line, and Mr Eolleston sends an evasive reply, in which, however, he holds out a vague prospect of " satisfactory arrangements, both for the settlement and cession of lands for railway construction," a sort of diplomatic phraseology which is much in vogue in circumlocution offices.

On the 4tli April a deputation waited on the Premier in Auckland, who replied, " that the Government desired that the railway should be mado as speedily as possible, and would facilitate the arrangements necessary to ensure the construction," but the inecessary preliminary was to pass the lanfcl through the Court. Up to May 2nd, 130,000 acres had been passed through, when the directors tried to move the Government with another i memorandum, and then ensues a regular memo-, rnndumiad practically resulting in nothing. The directors wanted, the Government to act. The Government only wrote vague diplomatic promises, ', and plans of what they proposed to do, but apparently never meant to perform. On the 3rd March, however, Mr Kolleston submitted a distinct statement of the views and proposals of the Government, which were favourable to the objects of the company, and revived their hopes of success. Finally, after more memoranda and a special deputation, to Wellington, the directors "regret that they have been unable to move the Government from the position taken, which, though denied being antagonistic to the company as to the final construction of the line, is nevertheless fruitful of delay, which the directors believe they (the Government) could have prevented." ♦— .

This last sentence gives the pith of the matter" The Government has displayed a degree of insincerity throtighout these tedious and vexatious negotiations which is highly 'discreditable, likely to have a most prejudicial effect on private enterprise and investment, and calculated to repel foreign capital from the Colony. What faith can any body of capitalists, anxious to carry on the work of opening up and settling the wake lands of the country from the point where the Government confesses its inability to proceed further, have in that Government, when they have this example before them of official obstruction, disingenuousness, and lack of public spirit.