ALLEGATION OF INCONSISTENCY

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22431, 18 June 1938, Page 15

ALLEGATION OF INCONSISTENCY

HON. ADAM HAMILTON CRITICISED * . ADDRESS BY MINISTER FOR PUBLIC WORKS [THE PRESS Special Service.] GERALDINE. June 17. "Mr Hamilton says we are spending too much money in boom times and that we ought to wait patiently until a slump comes,” said the Hon. R. Sample, (the Minister for Public Works) when addressing a gathering of 650 persons at Geraldine to-night. Mr Semple outlined improvements to roads for safety and other public works, and mentioned the quick relief that had been given to settlers in the recent Hawke’s Bay disaster.

He questioned whether these were jobs that could wait. Were members of the Cabinet to sit in their offices in Wellington, he asked, and say how sympathetic they were, but that they regretted they could not go ahead with the improvements and relief until another slump came? “I don’t believe there is a boom,” said Mr Semple. “We are just struggling back to prosperity. There may be a boom in comparison with the period when Mr Hamilton’s party was in power.” Answering criticism about expenditure on railways, Mr Semple charged Mr Hamilton with inconsistency. “Who started the railways in question?” asked Mr Semple. The Government of which Mr Hamilton was a member had started eight of these, for which it had borrowed £8,000,000, and had paid £3,500,000 in interest. That Government had stopped the lot when the slump came, said Mr Semple. It had sacked every man on the jobs and had left many stranded in the rough gorges between Wairoa and Gisborne. The last Government had paid £3,500,000 in interest and had then stopped the work and had sold every piece of gear it could, said the Minister. It had left that which it did not sell to rot, and fall down or to rust out. It had not spent a penny to keep the completed portions t>£ the line in repair. “Political Crime”

“If you travel the civilised world, you could not discover another political crime like that perpetrated on an innocent people,” said'Mr Semple, The Minister said that the present Government had carried out a thorough investigation, including soil surveys in the area to be served, arid had decided to complete the lines for the benefit of the settlers. The completed line to Wairoa, he said, had doubled the expectations of those who had written the report, giving some idea of what it would do in the future. Strong criticism of the balloon loop at Dargaville was voiced by Mr Semple. The abandoned line from Whangarei to Dargaville had cost £450.000, he said, and the interest was £23,000. The line had been abandoned when within two miles of Dargaville, when two years’ interest would have paid for its completion. Against the protests of the engineers, the Minister alleged, the then Minister for Public Works, the Rt Hon. J G. Coates, had included a balloon loop in this line, because of some promise- he had made. “The loop serves hardly anybody but the people going up in the train can shake hands with the people coming down,”, said Mr Semple. “The balloon , loop is the laughing stock of the engineering world, and it only cost the people of this country £150,000.” In Westland, Mr Semple continued, the tools the old Government could not sell had been dumped in the Duller river, and the ones at Parnassus into the sea. “These are the people,” Mr , Semple continued, “who talk about destroying the credit of the nation and going down hill with the brakes off.” When he took over the Public Works Department, he had never seen such an antiquated and costly organisation in his life. The application of machinery to public works had saved the country thousands of pounds and the work was carried out more efficiently and quickly with the burden it lifted from the backs of the men.