SOUTHERN INTERESTS

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 25, 30 January 1924, Page 10

SOUTHERN INTERESTS

AND NORTHERN DOMINATION

MR. FLESHER'S HOME RULE PLAN.

(BI TELEURAPH.—PRESS ASSOCIATION.) CHRISTCHURCH, 20th Jan. It was suggested by the Mayor (Mr. J. A. Flesher), during a discussion at a meeting of the City Council last night, that the time had arrived when the South Island should make an effort to throw off the political domination of the North and receive greater freedom to develop its own resources and control it 3 own affairs. In amplification of that suggestion the Mayor stated to-day that he was now more than ever cpnvinced that some such constitutional change was required in the interests of the South Island. "With the growth of population in the North Island," he said, "it is quite evident that the South Island in the future will be a very subordinate factor in the general administration of the affairs of the Dominion. We are bound to suffer by the preponderance in the New Zealand Parliament of the North Island members, and while we are so tied, down and fettered by North Island domination, we in the South Island will never have the right to develop our own resources for the good of our own community. It is now quite evident from Tecent' developments that the South Island is going to be used, as a result of northern domination, to help out the requirements of the North. That is abundantly clear to my mind from the way in which matters have developed in regard,, to the Highways Board. The petrol '-tax idea is another example, and there are others. My conviction is that we of the South Island are not to be allowed to develop our own natural resources and advantages for the benefit of our own people. Here in Canterbury, for example, we have, an abundant supply of potential water power and we are not allowed to use it simply because it would conflict with the general policy of, the Government. It simply means that we are penalised by reason of our situation and lack of voting strengthen the New Zealand Parliament. lam firmly convinced that a return to the former provincial form of Government or some other modification ,0 the constitution giving the South IsJand greater freeaom, is required if the. South Island is to have any chance of I developing adequately 'in the