TOPICS OF THE DAY

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 112, 14 May 1930, Page 10

TOPICS OF THE DAY

It is now the turn of Mr. H. E. Holland, M.P. (author of "How the Liberals Voted"), to shuffle when asked how Labour will vote. The Consistency which Mr. Holland found wanting in the Liberals he has now lost himself.' He must fall back on such weak evasions as he used in reply to a questioner, at Frankton. He was asked ."whether* the "Labour Party would vote with Reform to put out the United Government. His answer was that his parly dealt with situations as they arose and. had not discussed its altitude should such'a contingency arise during the coming session. It is difficult to understand how a party which prides itself on its readiness for any emergency can have left such a possibility out of its consideration.-- Does Labour propose to leave this question unsettled and decide it hurriedly at the last moment; or is ihe party so fully alive to ils own inconsistency that it fears to face the issue? Just before the Hult byelection the party made a declaration the substance of which was that the Government had failed lamentably. It was hopeless; therefore, the Hull electors should not return another Government nominee. But when il conies to ejecting the Government from office, Labour seems to be doubtful of the failure. The key to the position is to be found in Mr. Holland's addendum at Frankton.

Tlie result of'the last election was a definite pronouncement from the people that Mr. Coates and Reform were finished with." Mr. Coates's defeat was so overwhelming as to leave no doubt of public opinion regarding him. Sir Joseph Ward had failed to keep his election pledges and ho must go. When ho did, it would not be a question of Reform: going back, but of Labour.

If the General Election showed that Mr. Coates was finished with, it showed even more decisively that the country did not desire to begin^ afresh with Labour. But Labour hopes to slip into office between the other parties. Mr. Holland made this plain when he declared, some months ago, that in the event'of a United defeat Labour should be given an opportunity of forming a Government. It has since dawned upon him that the country would not tolerate such a procedure, leading to die exercise of authority by the smallest party whose aims are least favoured by the ejectors. So he is hedging. Labour now prefers to keep the stick with which it is threatening .the Government, lest that stick if it is used should break in its hand. It hopes to push the Government more to the left till its patient opportunism is rewarded with an opportunity to slip into office. The Labour objective is plainly revealed. The party desires office and will shape its policy to attain that end. •

Two years ago British railway companies were given authority to enter the road transport business. They have used that opportunity to the full, and are now (according to a cable message published yesterday) partowners of' 14,000 out of 35,000 large passenger-carrying vehicles. The rait' ways have spent £7,500,000 on road transport. This expenditure is small in comparison with the thousand millions capital investment in the .rail? ways, but it is sufficient to prove a valuable lever towards co-ordination, which is the declared policy of the railway companies. It has given the railway companies a voice in the control of road transport.- The procedure followed by the Great Western, the first big company to use the road power, was to purchase an interest in the road companies operating in its area, and then to begin allocating traffic on economic principles. This did not mean that all traffic was at once directed back to the railways; but road and railway shared according to their'capacity to handle the business economically. It is similar co-ordination that is essential in New Zealand; but it is doubtful if similar means can be used for securing it. In some localities here the Railway Department has entered the road trans: port business,1 and hopes to effect economies by avoiding wasteful duplication of services; but an extension of such operations on the scale adopted by the British private railway system would probably call forth a protest against interference with private enterprise and more Gov-

eminent in business. National economic interests demand, however,- that some means must be found for effecting co-ordination. There are two courses open: a light measure 'of transport control, with voluntary cooperation, or a greater measure of compulsory "control; Great Britain has secured a substantial measure of voluntary co-operation through financial combination of road and railway, but it has still been deemed necessary to supplement this by control legislation. Here we have scarcely made a beginning with voluntary • co-opera-tion, and Parliament, despite the urgency of the issue, refused to face the control legislation last session. The British example should convince us that'we cannot dally with it-much longer. , ,'' ; • '.. . - ♦ .* # "Tlie only unprofessional sports in England are fox-hunting and yachting." This statement by the "Journal dcs Debats" implies that Rugby as well as the-other forms of football are professional. Such a charge cannot rest on surreptitious professional tendencies by a few individuals, even if such exist in Rugby; the charge implies widespread professionalism, and we do" not believe that it is. true that Rugby football is "played by professionals, all of whom gain enormous profits.' But in. New Zealand it is certain that such a charge would be without foundation. A professional, player can crravitate to professional', football, and Rugby football in this'country is administered on the lines of excluding such players. Without any reproach to professional games, it is well that this position in Rugby should be made clear,' especially when the cabled statements of the French paper are^ published on the occasion of the arrival of the visiting English'team. We Welcome that team with less regard for-wins or losses than for the fact that its playing merits, whatever they may be, represent the result of amateur effort. Ours too!

Is the Government coming (or has it come) to- the conclusion that salmon-spawning an J hydro-electric dams are incompatible, and that the salmon must go? If so, as an article elsewhere in this issue

shows, it is time to be candid about the matter, and thereby give critics (constructive critics) a chance to approach public opinion before the damming , of salmon rivers has gone too far. Many years of patient, hopeful effort and much expenditure resulted in acclimatising salmon in the Wailaki. The salmon are, ■ therefore, worth something. The Wailaki is a potential source of power, and that also is worth something. Furthermore, to accommodate salmon with fish-lad-ders, so as to enable them to pass the dams and proceed to their spawning reaches, will cost something. The time has arrived when these several somethings should be estimated by the Government, which should then place the results, along with all pertinent pros and cons, before the public. Commonsense suggests —and American experience confirms; —that fish-ladders should be considered as part of any river-barrage that would obstruct salmon —not merely considered as an after-thought; also that, unless the cost of the fish-ladder is an economic impossibility, the salmon's prior right of waterway should be preserved. New Zealand has heard many objections, to acclimatised deer; few (if any) to acclimatised salmon, and those few objections probably came from acclimatised trout. And salmon, much more than deer, appears to offer a potential industry. But while man holds the salmon's life-line—and some men would be ruthless in cutting it —he holds no such* control- over deer, which also seem to have far more friends than the endangered fish. The case of the salmon should come publicly to trial before dam-building has proceeded too far to make laddering practicable. Ministers should1 not abandon the issue to a futile interdepartmental tug-of-war.