POWER ACROSS COOK STRAIT

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27912, 8 March 1956, Page 3

POWER ACROSS COOK STRAIT

Sir, —Two of your correspondents have objected to the project of carrying electric power across Cook Strait. They are, I am afraid, voices in a wilderness. Even your paper has lost the zest it used to show in provincial government days when matters that concerned Canterbury were looked at through a spy-glass. Mind you, you are in fashion, for local pride is as dead as a maggot and local government has. in the main, fallen into the hands of nincompoops. And so we have reached the stage where New Zealand does end at Cook Strait and the North Island regards us with the same detachment as we do the Chathams.—Yours, etc., , DOUGLAS CRESSWELL. March 7, 1956.

Sir.—lf we are to export the breath of prosperity, progress, and expansion to the North Island, let us not waste time with recriminations but forge ahead with plans for our future—if we still have orie. First, put prosperity in an iron lung, hold progress in abeyance, and throw expansion on the scrap heap. Having done that we should* raise the cash for the tunnel road and harbour improvement, then shelve both plans, and invest the money in a trust fund. About the year AD2OSG we will still have water and will need that money to buy bread when the unemployed of the then overcrowded North Island migrate to the mainland. Thus will we provide what meagre hospitality we may for our lord-W northern masters. Surplus power, kept here, will. I believe, bring in a few years an expanded and improved economy with its mainfold benefits that may otherwise not be attained in a few decades.—Yours, etc., ■» A. F. BETHUNE. Hornby, March 6. 1956.

Sir.—Have the powers that be ever heard of psychological reaction? Even if the power saved in this particular winter is to be used by us. they will get little voluntary help when one column of the paper emphasises our serious position and two columns away big headlines about taking our power to the North Island. The South Island is growing apace. The North Island has grabbed and grabbed long enough. Also, the cost of exploring the sea floor will be great. Will the North Island pay for that; or do we pay half of the cost of being robbed? —Yours, etc. SOUTH ISLAND POWER FOR THE SOUTH. March 7, 1956.