THE H.B. TRIBUNE. THURSDAY, SEPT. 15, 1911. AUCKLAND’S GREED.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 230, 15 September 1911, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. THURSDAY, SEPT. 15, 1911. AUCKLAND’S GREED.

The Queen City is ambitious. Her people are shamelessly greedy. It has an institution ’yclept the Auckland Railway League comprising members who are pledged to grab all they can in the way of railwayvotes. Their demands to Government for money to build railways rival in check and daring Germany's demands to France to cede hundreds of thousands of miles of territory. This Liague of railway'grabbers has deci'led on its programme for the year. Its policy in brief is to be :—Larger votes for the main lines (leading to Auckland of course) now under construction ,and concentration upon these lines to the exclusion of less important projects. Among the latter we may here mention the Hawke’s Bay-Gisborne line is included by these railway pirates of the north. We will refer later to their view of the important hue llawk'-’s Bay has urged upon the Government for many years. Last year the Auckland League asked £350.000 for Auckland railways—and got it. This yea? the League intends. to ask for £-150.000 in all, and they will get it to the exclusion of I the Hawke's Bay line if the Hawke's | Bay people arc somnambulistic I enough to allow them to have their j will. They want work to be eneri gctically proceeded with this y ear on | no less than three railways having | there term'ni in Auckland. They want £200,000 for the North Auckland Main Trunk. £150,u00 for the Auckland-Gisborne line, and £lOO,000 for the Ongaruc-Stratford line ; practically half a million of everybody's money to be spent for the benefit of Auckland. And this demand immediately after the comple- | tion of the Wellington-Auckland i main trunk. Oh I Auckland, thy | name is greed —but your hope of I getting what y ou ask for is Bt'.cki ley's, that is if Government acts i justly to other places whose requirei ments are deserving of greater conI sidcration. This is what Mr. I’eaeocke. chairman of the Auckland League, says in his annual report : “A vote of £lOO.OOO was asked for by the league last year, and a resolution was passed at the annual meet- ' ing. urging ihe starting of the work ; at the Waihi end as soon as pos- ; sible : £ll".<’•)<' was toted for the

line, namely, £BO,OOO for the Gisborne to Motu section, £2OOO for the Tauranga-Paengaroa section, and £50,000 to commence work from Gisborne towards Napier. No money was provided or authorisation made for the extension ot the line from the Waihi end. This the league’s council regarded as a great mistake, as it delayed the linking up of Tauranga and the other East Coast settlements and the magnificent Bay of Plenty district with Auckland. Moreover, Waihi, being a mining community, and a coining centre for farm produce of every kind, would afford a good local market for the farmers of the East Coast. The league’s council, therefore, regarded it as of far more importance in the interests of the whole Dominion that the railway should be pushed on without delay from the Waihi end than that any work should be begun upon the Gisborne-Napier line. The supposed great importance, according to the Minister of Public Works, of completing railway connection between Auckland and Wellington by the East Coast route was not apparent to the council, in view of the direct communication already existing by the North Island Main Trunk line. It was desirable that the exexpenditure of public money upon the Gisborne-Napier connection should be postponed until Auckland was connected with Gisborne, or at least until the line from the Gisborne end reached Motu ami that from the Waihi end reached Opotiki.” It is well that we should know the selfish attitude Auckland has adopted—should know how wideawake its people are to their own interests. how intolerant they a t the rights of others, and how blindly indifferent they are to the general progress of the Dominion. The opposition the East Coast railway is to receive from Auckl 1 made even more appari t I the advice given by the auckland “Star” to its readers yesterday. It says:—“We hope that every effort will be made to urge upon Ministers the necessity for carrying on these lines (the Auckland lines) from both ends at once. The Department has refused hitherto to consider the strong arguments in favour of pushing on the East Coast line from Waihi to Tauranga ; and this neglect, if persisted in, is likely to inflict serious injury on Auckland in the near future. If the line is carried through from Tauranga to Poverty Bay, all the trade of the rich Bay of Plenty district will how eastward to Gisborne ; and this danger is accentuated by the fact that last year a sum was voted to be£in the construction of the Gisborne-Napier line. If this line were finished before Auckland and Waihi had direct connection by rail with Tauranga, our East Coast trade would centre in Napier, and eventually Hawke’s Bay and Wellington would get most benefit from the line, Auckland being practically left out in the cold. As the Bay of Plenty and PovertyBay districts are part and parcel of Auckland, such a result of the construction of the East Coast line would be extremely unfair to us, and it behoves us to make every effort to obviate it. For similar reasons, our members must once more urge that the Stratford line must be constructed from the Ongarue as well as the Taranaki end.” And what is Hawkes’ Bay doing to combat the plot of the string-pulling Aucklanders 1 We have an East Coast Railway League, we had a part of a deputation waiting on the Premier to-day. We use the word “part” advisedly, because three or four of the men appointed to act on that deputation were not even acquainted until too late to be present, that the Premier would receive them to-day. Whose fault ? The natural inference is that the member for Hawke’s Bay' is to blame for not notifying the Hastings delegates. The member for Napier might have sent word had it suited him to do so, and his neglect in this is likely to cause him to be accused of cunningly keeping the Hastings representatives in the dark. We do not think that he would wilfully descend to such a trick, but the fact remains that at least three of the deputation were absent because they received no official notmeation. It is very apparent that if the Hawke’s Bay League conducts its business in this manner, the alert Auckland League will, to use a common phrase, “Walk rings round them.” [Just as we go to press a telegram from our Parliamentary correspondent conies to hand stating /East Coast Railway deputation indefinitely postponed.” Evidently the appointment with the Premier has been completely bungled.]