THE WAIUKU RAILWAY

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2318, 27 November 1914, Page 4

THE WAIUKU RAILWAY

Probably very few people have paid very much attention to the underhand Suggestions that have been made concerning the Waiuku railway. Men who seek to slander by innuendo and who fear to make opeu charges as a rule receive scant attention, and when they are directly challenged to come out into the open and fail to do. so, the public am not slow to draw the correct conclusion the slander is unfounded. So, it, "is in connection with the Waiuku railway, tho contemptible insinuations made against the Prime Minister by certain Opposition newspapers have been well answered by their own refusal to openly charge Mr. .Massey with what they have been trying to convey by thinly veiled suggestions'. But last evening Mr. Massey went a step further, and at his Hutt meeting .exposed in detail the baseness of the slander directed against him. The suggestion that has been made is that Mr, Massey Las a-share in a block of land in or near his own electorate which has been used as an ostrich farm, and that to benefit himself he had a line of railway laid out to run through the land and so enhance its value. In view of the actual facts of tho position it is shocking to think that even political rancour 'or personal malice would descend to such distortion and misrepresentation. The facts very briefly stated are that the Waiuku railway, which is the railway in question, was surveyed fifteen years before Mr. Massey entered " Parliament, and a still longer period before he an interest in the land through which the lino was designed to pass. No one can dispute these facts. How Mr. Massey came to acquire the interest in the ostrich farm has been told often enough. The, farm had not proved a financial success, and more capital was required to develop the undertaking. The setters in "the neighbourhood interested themselves in the matter, and with others Mr. Massey, then member for the district, invested money in it. Mr. Massey's interest was *500, which later on when mriro money was required was increased to £1000. The farm as an ostrich farm cloeg not seem to have yielded any dividends to the shareholders, but the land has been improved in' valuo by working and probably if sold would recoup those who invested their money in it. So far as tho railway is concerned the line was surveyed and promised long, before the Massey Government came into office. The only' thing that the Reform Government has done has been to see that .the recommendations of the Government engineers were carried out, and in this respect a ..departure'has beerf made irom the original plan to the detriment of the shareholders in the block. Instead of the line as originally proposed passing right through the centre of tho block a change was made on the advice of the Government engineers, and it only passes through a small corner of the block. But the point of outstanding importance',. apart from tho fact* that it was not the Massey Govcrnmont that was responsible ior the line being promised but previous Governments, is that the block of land has been served"'for years past by the Main Trunk Railway, which runs right past the property, ,aa - those who, have travelled on that line have no doubt seen for themselves. The now line is of little if any value to it, and as already •'stated , the route of that line was laid , down years before Mr. Massey came into office. In the Franklin electorate, where the facts are fully known, there is nothing but contempt for those who are circulating the slanders, and at recent meetings there the electors have placed on record their views in the most emphatic terms. . The Chairman at one of the meetings of Mr. Massey's opponent for the seat publicly stated a few evenings ago that- the ostrich farm woufd not benefit by the new railway, but on tho contrary tho cutting off of a small corner would be detrimental to it. He then added: Tho old survey was put through years before the Reform Government cSme'into office. Therefore, if Mr. Massey had wanted to benefit the farm he irould have left the originalroute. , Instead tho matter was left entirely to the engineers. , Probably the matter was not worth the space, we have given to it, but it will at least serve to show the class of malicious misrepresentation which Ministers are subjectedto in an endeavour to injure them in the eyes of the electors.