The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1931. CONDEMNED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 215, 11 September 1931, Page 6

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1931. CONDEMNED.

For the cause that /or-fc.» assistawee, For the wrong that needs retittant* t For the future in the distance, And the good that ice can 40.

In the most important report on the New Zealand railways that has ever been compiled, the new Railways Board recommends the stopping of work on sis railway lines. No mention is made of the Tawa Flat deviation. which will so greatly improve the run out" of Wellington, or the completion of the Stratford-Main Trunk connection, which is nearing completion and will link up Auckland and Taranaki. but everything else of major importance is condemned. The South Island Main Trunk, which would cost two millions to complete, is put in the same category as the Waiotira-Dargaville line, which requires only £46,000, and the Westport-Inangahua line, which was considered to have good prospects. The Board's recommendations that works be stopped affect an estimated expenditure of six millions, and their reasons are the same in i every ease. Completion is not justified by the business offering, and would add to the existing deficit. The Board says of the South Island Main Trunk that it has not overlooked the factor of development of the country, and it may be presumed that it has done the same in all its investigations, but primarily it has regarded the railways as a business concern, for whose solvency it is responsible. The report on the South Island main line is particularly interesting. It brushes aside all the special pleading of local interests, calculates the annual loss of the completed line at £173,000, and quotes a million as the Public Works estimate of the cost of the proposed new harbour at Clifford Bay! What the Board says about this particular line has been said in effect many times, but it was extremely important that this last court of appeal should have upheld the popular judgment. After this no more should be heard of this particular work, but, of course, local clamour will not be still. And what of the policy that permitted this construction to proceed for so long without proper invesi tigation ? The waste of money that is revealed in the report generally is simply appalling. The Board also disposes of the argument that railway construction should go on for the sake of the unemployed. It might have gone so far as to say that it would be more profitable to take all the men working on the South Island main line and employ them wheel-barrowing j soil from one side of the road and back again. The report is said to have been received by Parliament with* laughter, and well it might. There is grim humour in all the waste that has gone on in railway building since IS70 —the construction of political lines, the absurd dispersion of effort, the almost v incredible separation of the Pnblie Works and Railway Departments, all of which has cost the country many millions. Now that the comedy is being brought to an end by force of circumstances, members may well laugh. They are laughing at the blunders made or condoned by themselves and their predecessors. But is this why members laughed, or was it because it struck them as funny that anyone should think the old paroehial allegiances could be broken down* We shall soon see whether members will rally to the parish pump or take the larger view. The Board has done its duty, and ' now waits for members of Parliament to do 1 theirs, and so does the country.