RENEWAL FUNDS.

Evening Star, Issue 25172, 11 May 1944, Page 7

RENEWAL FUNDS.

I'O rill EDITOk Sir, —It would be impossible with the war time rationed paper you are allowed for me to quote fully the work of renewals put in by the Labour Party during its term of office, as " Tom Jones " suggests, for the good reason that the summary of works connected with renewals linked up with the additional water supply brought in during Labour's term alone covers three pages of summarised items in the city engineer's report, 193 G-37 year book, which includes what I omitted, the renewal of mains in the city area, also. To prove Labour's " ability to employ labour," in the tramway manager's report for 1936-37 year book one learns " the work on the permanent way has been steadily maintained," and to quote any one tram line, " portions of the Castle street line have been completely renewed and also the curv* lending from Castle street into High street." What a contrast does this present to the blue ticket council's application to lift the tramway rails in Castle street at a time when a ship was approaching our shore with two and a-half miles of tramway rails in its hold I As the citizens of Dunedin, in common with the citizens of New Zealand, are the common owners of the railway the .electors of Dunedin are interested in making it pay to avoid being taxed to make up the deficiency. It and our Dunedin transport system can only be made to pay by being coordinated in such a way that both State and municipal transport systems act as feeders to each other. That is one of Labour's ways of, co-operating with the Government. Another act of co-opera-tion was the initiation by Labour of a municipal housing scheme in which, by taking advantage of the Labour Government's ability to create credit, 207 municipal houses were built, and had Labour been given a second term 500 more would have been constructed before carpenters and other tradesmen were transferred to build hutments, etc, for our soldiers. Now that this work is slackening it would be safer to give Labour, who initiated a building policy;, a chance to complete the works it started, and not trust the blue ticket candidates who turned the housing scheme down, and who propose to destroy our assets by rooting out our tramlines and preventing the electric power and lighting department from dealing with its best customer. Labour, instead of such acts of sabotage, would co-operate with all departments that are dependent on one another, whether State, municipal, or run by private individuals, companies, etc. —I am, etc., 4/1530. May 9.