RAILWAY EXPENDITURE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 217, 12 September 1900, Page 4

RAILWAY EXPENDITURE.

For cool, studied, political effrontery it would be extremely difficult to^find a parallel to the arg-ument advanced by Mr. Guinness at- a meeting of South Island members. The gentleman is reported to have said:—"The money required for the completion of the South Island lines was £2,160,----000, and for the North Island lines £1,500,000, so hon. members would see' that the 'South Island proportion should be much bigger than that for the North." . The South Island, it must be remembered, has received for railways • several millions more of public money than the North.' All the lines for which there is any urgency were completed long ago. The main centres of population from the north of Canterbury to the Bluff are linked tip by the iron road, and have been for years. The North Island Trunk line, commenced at the same time,, would, under the present system to wliich the Southerners would keep it, not be completed for another 20 years. Our colonial politics should surely be permeafed by some spirit of fairness and right. Such action as that taken by the Southern members in this matter would, we feel sure, not be supported by the majority of their constituents. Is there no such thing as a colonial in contradistinction to a local politician in this colony? It would almost seem as if a negative answer must be returned to this query. In the end the control of raihvay construction will have to be removed from the vote of Parliament and entrusted to a competent impartial Board. The railways of the colony should not be made with .a view to equalisation of votes, but solely according to their urgency. The petty spirit of members has made it very evident that, the latter is certainly not the system on which the money has been expended of late years, and the fact is emphasised by the pitiable exhibition of South Island jealousy manifested at the present moment by Southern members.