TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 17, 20 July 1926, Page 8

TOPICS OF THE DAY

This week it is anticipated the Legislative Council will decide the fate of Mr. T. K. Sidey's Summer Time Bill. This is the second appearance of the measure before the Legislative Council, but no member of that body can now be unaware of its provisions or of the arguments advanced for and against its passage. Surely no proposal for reform has previously been submitted to such a searching probation. Fourteen times the Bill has been introduced. In 1915, six years after the first introduction, it reached the Legislative Council, and was there killed. It is to be hoped that it will meet with a better fate on this occasion. Its merits have been thoroughly examined and approved by tho public, the House of Representatives, and a Select Committee of the House. The public opinion has been expressed favourably in numerous resolutions from chambers of commerce, local governing bodies, and sports organisations. Inquiry by a Committee of the House has failed to reveal grounds for opposition sufficient to deter the Committee from reporting favourably upon the Bill. The opinion of tho House itself has been shown in a non-party vote of 35 to 18. There is then, sufficient reason for asking the Council to consider the Bill as a reform which has been examined at leisure and with thoroughness, and is fully desired by the people. Moreover, sinco the Legislative Council rejected Mr. Sidey's Bill in 1915, a similar measure of- reform has had ten years' trial in Great Britain, and has now been permanently adopted. Under these circumstances the public will follow with interest the Council's deliberations upon the proposal. * » * When the local authority itself has forgotten that it had a bylaw governing pedestrian traffic it is not a cause for wonderment that the pedestrians pass on their way without regulation or interference. Bylaws alone are not sufficient to keep traffic under control. There must be authority, represented by a policeman or inspector in uniform, behind them. Otherwise even the risk will not prevent broaches. This is demonstrated by tho lamentable accident at the Rona Bay wharf, when a bylaw, framed to prevent such accidents, was ignored. Every day in tho streets one may see pcoplo taking equal risks with traffic. Sometimes they break a bylaw, but bylaw No. 1000 is so vague and general in its wording that it would be difficult to prosecute under it. In the wood-blocked streets there are no street-crossings, unless the white lines now almost completely obliterated are deemed to be crossings, and even where there are such crossings tho pedestrian is required only to keep "as near thereto as conveniently may be." Soon it will be necessary to make a more definito rule and to charge the traffic officers with tho duty of enforcing it, especially in the busy hours. * » * Deer at present constitute a menace to cultivated crops and to forests in several parts of New Zealand. Their destruction of the undergrowth hinders the natural regeneration of the forests and if the destruction is. continued the forests in course of years will die. But it is probable that the menace can be checked without wholesale measures of extermination. There are areas of steep high country which can never be cleared for cropping or grazing, and which arc unsuitable even for commercial forestry owing to their inaccessibility. If the deer are confiued to such areas the damage they do may be kept within bounds, and the sporting asset not wholly lost. The difficulty is that the herds will always tend to come down to the lower country, and, especially when their numbers increase, will invade the cultivated lands. Iu these conditions the only alternative to extermination is strict control. As I the president of the AVellington Acclimatisation Society has pointed out, tho I burden of such measures must be sh.ir.ed by the Government. In districts where the societies have been alive to the growing menace control has already j been attended with aome success. It is in .districts where there has been slackness that the danger has increased and Government intervention has become urgently necessary. * # * Reading the interviews with members .of the Rural Credits Commission, who havo returned to New Zealand one must be impressed with the fact that, whatever they may propose to solve the financial difficulties of the farmer, they have no infallible prescription for prosperity—except tho old one, greater knowledge and hard work. "The fertility of Denmark," Colonel Esson stated, "was due more to the labour and industry of tho agriculturists than to tho quality c f the land itself. They had called in the aid of science in

their agricultural work, and they aimed at producing the very best, and nothing but the best." AVe do not under-estiuiate the importance of finance in farming, especially in assuring the farmer against dispossession and providing the funds for improving his holding. But money alone is not sufficient. It must be allied with industry and science. Yet we have a grudging consent, and even disapproval, manifested by some of the professing friends of the farmer for the Government proposal to establish a well-equip-ped agricultural college.