Molesworth Again

Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25305, 3 October 1947, Page 6

Molesworth Again

The member for Selwyn. speaking to the estimates for the Prime Minister’s Department, last week, criticised very usefully an official film of Molesworth Station. The Prime Minister, who could have had him ruled out of order at once or at any time, since the film was produced by the Public Works Department, preferred to hear him out and expressed the wish to hear him again on the subject. It is pleasant to record an occasion when the illumination of public business was improved by knowledge on one side and tolerance on the other. The occasion calls for a little more comment than that, however. Mr McAlpine’s point was that the film, in picture and caption, unfairly and ignorantly compared the management of the station by “ private enterprise ” and by the State. When Mr McAlpine protested that for reasons he made clear the evidence of the film was “ absolutely valueless ” and misleading, Mr Fraser replied,

without contesting the opinion, that he could not imagine the Public Works Department knowingly producing a misleading film. It is almost as difficult, perhaps, for anybody else to imagine any such thing; but it is necessary to ask why the Public Works Department, or any other department, should not know better than to proSuce a misleading film. The question is all the more important because Molesworth has previously been the subject of Misleading official publicity. The film is described as a “ recent ” one. It seems certain, then, to have been considerably predated by Bulletin No. 2 of the Soil Conservation and Rivers Control Council, entitled “ Tackling High Country * Problem “ ‘ Land ’ at Molesworth ”, This appeared rather more than two years ago and, as Professor Jobberns, chairman of the North Canterbury Catchment Board’s conservation committee, showed in a special article on this page at the time, it went much too far in assailing the methods—and not only the methods, the aims and motives—of New Zealand’s farmers: J It does not do the cause of conservation any good tot make wild statements to the effect that we have sabotaged the inheritance of our children’s children, or that “the subtle influence of private enterprise over the land policy of various governments in the past has been to the detriment of our soil resources.” It seems to me quite unreasonable, unnecessary, and unwise to suggest that those who took up Molesworth and spent their lives in working it had no motive but to convert Nature’s capital resources of soil and vegetation into “less enduring profit and wealth.” Nobody deliberately destroys the resources that produce his living. Professor Jobtferns went on to say that what has happened at Molesworth, as elsewhere very widely in New Zealand, and as widely beyond New Zealand, is that settlement has released forces which are only now beginning to be studied and brought under control. He added that, while the Molesworth spelling and revegetation and stocking experiments are interesting, too much should not be made of this one field of research: “ Molesworth, after all, is not really “typical of South Island hill coun- “ try ”, being so remote that it represents the extreme outer fringe of possible high country settlement, while all investigations carried on there could “just as well be con- “ ducted on almost any high coun“try holding still in productive “ use ”. The suggestion is that too much is being made of Molesworth in that specific scientific sense. It may be that too much effort is being concentrated there. But certainly too much is being made of Molesworth in other senses. First in an official bulletin, then in an official film, an account of the facts open to challenge as such has been distorted by the emphasis of a political reading of them. Government departments do badly when they go wrong, and could easily avoid going wrong, on the facts in their publicity and propaganda; they do worst when they go wrong on them along the line of a politically tendentious argument. They have done it. No doubt they have not done it deliberately. But the Prime Minister will agree that they must as strictly see to it that the official publicist does not grind axes as that the camera does not lie.