NOT VOTE-CATCHING

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 143, 20 June 1938, Page 8

NOT VOTE-CATCHING

RIMUTAKA TUNNEL

MR. SAVAGE'S DENIAL

STATE AMD THE LAND

(From "The Post's" Special Reporter.)

MASTERTON, June 18. A denial that the scheme to drive a tunnel through the Rimutaka Hill was a vote-catching proposal was made by the Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage) when speaking at a civic reception this evening. The Mayor (Mr. T. Jordan) expressed his appreciation of the Government s decision. It would remove the shackles from the district, he said. He had heard a small whisper of discontent alter the decision was announced, and if at any time the Prime Minister required the name and address of the person who originated it he would be glad to give it. The decision was the best 1 news the district had had for years, and would mark the beginning of the development of the Wairarapa.

Mr. J. Robertson, M.P., referred to the attempt to throw cold water on the scheme, and remarked that things wore coming to a very sad pass when politics were so biased and prejudiced that they blinded the people to what was in the interests Of the Dominion and the development of a district. They had been waiting for. the scheme for forty years.

Tho Prime Minister said that someone had suggested that it was a method oi' catching votes. "Whether it catches vet Co or not there is a hole going tile ii'lV he said. "We can get t'jn cr twelve men in the Government to put it through if we want to, and not the least of them is Mr. Scmple. We have talked about it long enough, and we will get it going at the earlicci moment. We will put on someone else the responsibility for stopping it.

"It would not be the first time that necessary work had been stopped. I do not want anyone to think it is a pre-election move. It is our desire to do the right thing." TO ASSIST PRODUCTION. It was the worst form of insanity to continue crawling over the hill, he continued, and he would like a photograph of the man responsible for. the present route. "We are not doing this for political reasons," he said. "We are doing it because we want to see the Wairarapa property developed. Land settlement is a thing we have to go into. We want to see the fullest economic production. When the individual fails, the State comes into the picture, and not before.

"Tho State is not justified in coming into a job if the individual is doing the job, and if anyone thinks that the New Zealand fanner io not doing his job he has another think coming. I want to see land brought into a state of production so that a man and his family—with or without money—cam make a livelihood."