WHOSE NEW ZEALAND?

Forest and Bird, Issue 33, 1 June 1934, Page 15

WHOSE NEW ZEALAND?

Anybody’s or Everybody’s?

1 here is an old saying, as true now as when it was first uttered: “What is everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” Surely it should be everybody’s business to insist on a policy for the conservation of New Zealand’s life-sustaining resources, but this country has never had a Parliament or a Government which has given whole-hearted and clear-minded attention to this national need. At intervals, individual Ministers of the Crown have taken a statesmanlike view of the field, but they have been more or less isolated cases. Indeed some Governments in the past were guilty of disastrous ignorance and short-sightedness when they insisted on the clearing of priceless forests on steep watersheds when land was leased or sold to Crown tenants. To-day, in many parts of the country one may see very grave offences against the public interest by individuals who believe that they have a perfect right to do whatever they like on their land regardless of the consequences to othef people of this generation and posterity. Some are guilty of pollution of rivers. Some allow rabbits or noxious weeds to increase on their land. Others destroy the forest cover on rugged high country. The time is long overdue for effective restraint of the individual liberty which, in some cases by stupid action and in other cases by careless neglect, proves harmful to national welfare.