PUBLIC WORKS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVII, Issue 17711, 11 February 1918, Page 4

PUBLIC WORKS.

It will be noticed that the Minister of Public Works has again been approached by an Auckland depiu -on “ urging the importance of various milway Works.” The persistence of tho northerners is, of course, very well known, and in this matter they set a pace which the people in this part of the Dominion will simolv have to follow or be sidetracked. Sir William Fraser, it is true, does . not appear to have given the latest deputation very muclf comfort. He said it was all a Question of labour rather than of money; that* lie could put ten thousand men on to public works if they were available. Neither the .Minister of Publio Works nor his colleagues show very much consistency in answering requests for expenditure on railways and roads. They are ais likely to say that the problem is one of money, all -the country’s resources being required to meet war expenditure. But that excuse was never valid, for the reason that the Public Works Department is well supplied with ways and means. Naturally there is not a great deal of labour obtainable. It Would he strange, indeed, if there was not a shortage after the mobilisation of more than a hundred thousand Soldiers. But the fact that Sir William Fraser has once again been called noon to reply to demands in tho North should serve to stimulate a reasonable agitation for justice in these parts. Granted that the number of men employed by the Public Works Department is much below normal, and that the Minister is • therefore unable to push on with works that are very desirable and for which ample funds are provided, there remains the point we raised the other day as to tlie distribution of such labour as is at hand. Unquestionably the North Island has been and is grossly favoured at the expense of the South Island. Only about a quarter of tho total number of employees is placed on iVorks in the South., Wo imagine that a sensible, im--partial commission, asked to advise the Government on the order in which railways now in course of construction ought to he completed, would unhesitatingly place the Midland Railway first in importance. It would recognise and emphasise the facts that Westland is isolated, that the development of a province rich in timber and coal and grazing lands is seriously handicapped, that a large part of the South Island would immediately benefit by the finishing Of this line, and that the Dominion as a whole would at once profit by the giving of earning-power to a large amount of capital already expended and eating up interest year after year. It is the wildest folly to fritter away, money and labour on a. variety of minor works and to starve a great national undertaking. That is what is now being done by the Public Works Department, which employs fewer men at the Otira tunnel than on branch lines up in the North. Sir William Fraser’s statement to the Auckland deputation, so far ns it goes, is. no doubt, a faitsummary of the position; but he would have been thoroughly, justified in adding that Auckland and its neighbourhood are already over well-treated and that tlie Otira tunnel is the most- urgent work that the Department has in hand. The Minister probably knows this quite well, but whether he does or not the conference to be held in Christchurch this week should he able to convince him. No piece of railway work in the Dominion lias suffered the delays experienced at Otira, and none would so well repay early completion.