THE OTAGO CENTRAL RAILWAY.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume X, Issue 572, 26 August 1880, Page 3

THE OTAGO CENTRAL RAILWAY.

The Wellington correspondent of the 'Star' observes: —There was some strong language indulged in during the debate on the Otago Central Railway vote. Mr M'Caughan set the ball going, by describing the line as " one of those accursed political railways," and as "a fraud." It would have been better for the member for Riverton had he held his peace, as Mr Speight, hitting out very hard, said: "There was no man in the house abetter judge of a political railway than the hon. member for Riverton, who succeeded last year, in company with the Minister for Works, in perpetrating the Waimea railway job, and was one of those who had the cool impudence to seek to abstract £40,000 from the public chest for' their own benefit. No man's judgment on such railways could more commend itself from experience to the House." The taunt told, as Mr M'Caughan immediately left the House on leave to withdraw his motion being refused. Then Mr de Liutour rose and said that "If Mr M'Caughan had not gone away he would have voted with him to enable him for once to carry out his pious resolutions." Mr Pyke afterwards took up the running; but Messrs. Speight, Dick, and Montgomery engaged in conversation, much in disgust to the member for Vincent, who at last complained to the Chair that Ministers of the Crown would not listen to the " words of truth and sobriety." Then Dr Wallis asked the Committee to keep order, or from having to speak so lcudlv ; and, having made his joke, the memb'er for Auckland West went home for the night. Mr Dick wanted to know why the House had not dealt with this matter before by Bill, and then was told, to his great disgust and the amusement of the Committee, that a Bill had been brought in to construct the line, that it was passed in 1877, and thrown out in the Upper House. The whole scene when Mr Pyke was reading from Committee reports was indescribably dull, and few could keep their countenances. Mr Hurst picked up the front page of "Truth" from off Mr Whitaker's' table, with the figures in full length thereon, and having shown it to Messrs Murrav and Bain went over and sat beside Mr Pyke, and held the picture up to his view, first on one side of his head and then the other, whereupon Mr Pyke called a messenger and had the cartoon carried to the Chairman of Committees to learn from him whether it was fitting that a picture of Truth should be paraded in the House of Representatives when Public Works Estimates werebcingdiscussed. At midnight Mr Pyke was still going on reading report after report, scarcely any Ministerialists being in the House. Mr do Lautour rose after Mr Pyke had done, and said it was an unfortunate thing that the interests of Otago were confined to one so utterly ignorant and incompetent as the Colonial Secretary, who knew that only three years since a Bill passed the Legislature authorising the construction of the line. Mr Dick at once got up, and begged the Committee to believe that he was ignorant, as he had represented, of such a Bill having passed through the House ; and he accused the member for Mount Ida of constantly saying unkind and unaccountable things. Mr Macandrew.accused Southland and Canterbury of jealously of Otago, and in proof of his contention cited the division on this very Bill in 1877, when all the Otago members save one voted for it, and every Southland member against it. The result of the debate your readers already know.