THE PARLIAMENTARY PICNIC.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 11535, 18 March 1903, Page 5

THE PARLIAMENTARY PICNIC.

TO • TTIE EDITOB OF THK TRESS. Sir, —A note in your last Thursday's issue announces that the Parliamentary picnic to the South Sea Islands will probably cast the colony about £1500. As I learn from a northern paper that tlie Governnjent steamer is being specially fitted up for the trip, and that amongst other things a promenade deck ia being erected, it is probable that this little jaunt will cost the country a lot more than the sum you state, and to what purpose? I wonder, Sir, that you and others in influential positions have not protested against this useless expenditure of the publio funds, while there are hundreds of settlers in our back country districts who cannot obtain a few pounds for a road or bridge. Why, Sir, y.*hen in Wellington a few moDtlis ago, a friend told me of the case'of his own son, who, sixteen years ago, was, with others, induced to take up a section in the bush. At the time they took up this land they were promised a road, and the land -was loaded with its cost. At the time of my informant's speaking they liad never had a dray on the place, everything they required", and everything they could produce, having to be packed in and out on horseback to the nearest draw* track, which was ten miles distant.

Take another case. A Nelson farmer told me the other day that in that district the railway has never yet been supplied with a sheep truck. The sheep when forwarded by rail have to travel in the ordinary close sided waggon, with the result that frequent deaths occur through emotheriug on account of the want of air. He instanced his own case, when, out ot a small lot of thirty odd prime fat wethers, five were found" dead through this cause on reaching their destination. And vet " money ia no object," when it ia spent in the enterUiinment of political friends, or the purchase of political support. I think Mr CI. Laurenson was the one whose fertile brain conceived this new method of getting rid of the publio funds, and no doubt the struggling settlers in the bush, for whom he professes so much love aud sympathy, will remember him in their orisons. In a_v case. Sir, I think it to be the clear public duty of those m the position you occupy to protest vigorously and insistently against such criminal waste of the taxpayers' money.— A COUNTRY SETTLER.