SEVERANCE?

Evening Post, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 107, 2 November 1909, Page 8

SEVERANCE?

HOSPITAL DISTRICTS. WELLINGTON .v. HOROWHENUA. A PROBLEM FOR THE GOVERNMENT. A deputation repier-enting the Horowhenua county waited on the Hon. G. Fowlds to-day to bring before him the necessity of severing Horowhenua from the Wellington Hospital district. Mr. W. H. Field, M.P., in introduc- , ing tho deputation, said their grievance was that in the schedule of the new Bill Horowhenua. was still included in the Wellington district for hospital and charitable aid purposes. The two main grounds on which they made the application were these :— First, that there ought to be equality of burden in regard to payment of hospital and charitable aid expenditure. In the Oroua counfy, for instance, attached to the Palmarston North district, the ratepayers paid one-twentieth of a penny in the £ ; Horowhenua county paid one-seventh of a penny. In his case it meant the payment of about £50 a year, of which one-seventh was for hospital and charitable aid. If he lived in the Oroua county, and was therefore in the PaTmerston North district, he would be paying under £2 a year for charitable aid. The difficulty was that the Wellington district included a large seaport town, where there was naturally a considerable amount of sickness and poverty. The trouble, however, was the burden borne by the people living in the country portions of the district. The levy on Horowhenua for charitable aid last year was £419 and the Government subsidy was £419. and yet the cost on the fund from Horowhenua was only £250. That, ho uiged,- was unfair. Another reason he urged in favour of the request of the deputation was that Horowhenua, or the greater part of it, was further away from Wellington than it was from Palmerston North — in some cases the difference was very great — and considerable inconvenience and suffering were caused on that accpunl. Several members of tho deputation elaborated these views at considerable length, and Mr. R. C. Kirk, chairman of the Hospital Board, urged that a further injustice would be done* to Horowhenua by the clause in tho Bill bringing infectious diseases hospitals into the scheme. MINISTER'S REPLY. The Minister, in replying, said they were face lo face with one of the most difficult problems that could %c presented for solution in a civilised community. The difficulties raised in connection with' Horowhenua were more or lehs in evidence right through the Dominion, and no proposal had been made that would statisfactorily meet the difficulty. The accessibility of the northern portion of the Horowhenua County lo the Palmerston Hospital was certainly a strong argument in favour of ; its being included in the Palmerston North district, but he did not think that would have been laised in a very acute form if it had not been for the question of contribution. Of course the difficulty was accentuated by the fact that it the Wellington district was reduced in area the burden on ( the lcmaining area would be increased. His own feeling was that the mistake was made when the cutting up- of, the Wellington district was first brought about. They could ,quite easily have resisted the claim of Wairarapa for i-evevance if it had not been for the fact that Palmerston had already been severed. As to the proposal that there should be one district for the whole Dominion, with a fund from which local bodies could draw as required, or pel haps one district for the North and one for the South Islands, he urged that unless theie was a sense of responsibility on the local bodies through haying to raise a portion of the money locally, extravagant waste would take place. It did now, in some ■districts, and if that was &o when local bodies had to find half the money, what would it be if they were relieved from finding any substantial , portion of it ? He saw considerable hardship in the subdivision that had already taken place, and the, representations of the deputation would receive very careful consideration. He was still looking round to see if there was any chance pi helping to equalise the burden without exposing them to the link of extravagant administration, which fceemed to him to bo a very serious feature of the problem.

The Hospital authorities report this afternoon that the condition of George Warren, the young sailor who was injured on the steamer Niwaru yesterday, has improved since his admission to the institution. Mr. William Rogers, manager of the Anchor Shipping and Foundry Company, Ltd., of Nelson, was a passenger from Nelson by the Nikau this morning. Passengers by the steamer lonic from London, via Capetown and Hobart, speak in glowing terms of the enjoyableness of i t,he voyage. The monotony of long j ocean distances was entirely banished by ! the excellent provision made by the ship's officers fox- entertainments, deck concerts, games, etc., which helped to make the most^ pleasant voyage within the experience of several of the officers. Weather conditions during the greater i part of the voyage left nothing to be desired. A cloud of mystery still envelops the visit of the Auckland gunners, mentioned in The Post yesterday. An explanation is still required to make intelligible tlie explanations already offered. The visitors have declared that the Wellington headquarters received due notice of the Auckland men's desire to see the Pet-one artillerists at work, but Colonel Robin has replied that the first news received at the head ofhea on the subject of the proposed expedition was in a letter from the officer commanding the Auckland district, a missive which was opened at 9.30 last Saturday morning. By return mail a request was 3ent to Auckland for further information, but Inter in the day Colonel Robin heard that members of the Auckland Company "had reached Wellington. The puzzled public may be more or less fully enlightened presently, for an enquiry has been ordered. Export duties on kauri logs have evidently been effective, according to the testimony of a delegate to the Timber Conference from the North of Auckland. "No logs are exported now," he said, "and so far as manufactured or dressed kauri is concerned, you would be doing the Northern workers a serious injury if you insist on an export duty. We mostly cater for the foreign market." "Yen, I think so," said an Otago delegate; "we can't get any kauri down South." To-morrow evening- at 7.30 o'clock Messrs. Thomson and Brown will offer by public auction, at their rooms, Vu<tomhouaetjuriy, Cooper' -> Estate, situate at Alicetown. The laud was formerly I used as Cooper's Nursery, and has now been .subdivided into 35 residential sections, each section having a. frontage to a formed road. The linn ako insert elsewhere an announcement in reference to the Evans J3aj Estate. Kilbirnie, for which thuy have boon appomtod sole egente.