AUCKLAND RAILWAYS LEAGUE

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 277, 21 November 1919, Page 6

AUCKLAND RAILWAYS LEAGUE

(Published by Arrangement.)

The council meeting yesterday passed the following questions to be asked of candidates for Parliamentary honours: — (1) Will you pledge yourself, if elected, to oppose further allocations for public works until a just allocation of expenditure is made, based on population, production, revenue contributed, and the extent "of idle lands suitable for settlement purposes?

(2) Seeing that the railway mileage ofthe South Island has been some 450 miles more than in the North Island for over 40 years past, and that the North Island railways now pay nearly double the interest on the opened lines than in the South, -would you take every opportunity to agitate for an equal mileage to be made as a just instalment to a fair basis of railway mileage in the future? (3) As the shorter mileage of the North Island railways pays between £500,000 and _-600,000 more in freight and passenger traffic than in the South Island railways, -would you advocate that this increased revenue be devoted to paying interest and sinking fund on sufficient loans to construct the 450 miles we are short in the North Island?

(4) Are you in favour of the Main Trunk lines that were in the schedule of Public Works over 40 years a«o in Auckland, Hawke's Bay, and Taranaki districts 'being immediately linked up at all costs, and thus give over 400,000 persons—nearly half the population ol the Dominion—direct communication with each other by Main Trunk railways ?

(5) Do you favour the formation ot a Board of Public Works outside' all political control dealing- -with the construction of railways, roads, etc.? Or, do you favour the old plan of ttoe Government doling out grants to their supporters, irrespective of the welfare of the Dominion's national requirements?