IMMEDIATE COMPLETION OF POVERTY BAY LINE

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6850, 4 March 1929, Page 8

IMMEDIATE COMPLETION OF POVERTY BAY LINE

No More “Snailways ”

PREMIER TURNED FIRST SOD OYER 20 YEARS AGO CHEAPEST ROUTE POR CHOICE. Per Press Association. GISBORNE, Last Night. An interesting light on tho Government’s railway policy, with especial reference to tho Wairoa-Gisborne line, was afforded by the Prime Minister's address at a Gisborne function on Saturday evening.-

Touching on local claims for a railway, Sir Joseph said that he had been asked how he would feel were he in the shoes of a district resident. His answer would have been that he would be absolutely disgusted with the men in Parliament over the past 16 years or

so. Over 20 years ago, he had turned the first sod on the line and still it was uncompleted. It was enough to make people turn in their graves and ask if we had all gone to sleep. Until that line was completed, it was not the slightest good and was not earning a penny revenue. Instead, during those 20 years, it has been simply eating up interest. There had been a great deal of argument about the rival routes (inland or coastal) and no railway at all in tho end. “In a week or ten days,” said Sir Joseph, with great emphasis, “I shall settle this route question for ever and any who come after will not be able to undo it. One of the routes must be linked up with Wairoa and the railway completed; the sooner the better for the prosperity of the district. What does it matter which route you have, as long as you have the railway? In three or four years, continued bir Joseph, the line from Gisborne to Wairoa would be finished and Parliament was to be asked to do it. The route costing the least money was the one which would be settled on. Poverty Bay was a very fine district but it naa to be linked up with outside districts, and that without delay. Once the line was completed, the Gisborne district would grow in prosperity, as those in the south had done. . n ' Where all railways were finished 3U years ago in the south, as soon as the' „ district was linked up with other ter-, Titories, it went ahead, and this would be the case in Poverty Bay I ~ . Without doubt,, a saving of time was a saving of money and indirectly added, to the wealth of all in the district concerned. Poverty Bay was in» crying need of a line so that closer settlement could bo developed. - It was an immediate need and not a matter for another ten years hence. Once the territory was linked up, then lorries j could look after the interior and act as, feeders to the railway. I New Zealand had no use for uncom-; pleted railways; they all needed finishing and then they would be giving back some revenue for the money sunk in them." . There was only one way to make a railway—fix a time limit and seo that it was adhered to. , Where would other countries have been, asked Sir Joseph, if they had followed on the lines of our snail-pace policy. They would never have attained anything like the' prosperity that had <*>me to some of them. New Zealand needed more settlers and we must spend more money on railways. That was one of the nrst things Parliament should do, though it would cost £10,000,000 during the next three or four years. AH radways should be completed and in them tho country - would then have its greatest asset. . ... It was only sound econmics that we should begin as early as possible to get some return for our money, it is was worth while starting any railway, then surely it was worth while fimsh•sfh Joseph again referred to the local Tailway. “You have a magnificent district and so has the Hawke’s Bay, so why not .embrace one another by railway? You need have no doubts we are going to complete the line.” In continuing, Sir Joseph strongly condemned the system of construction by sections which had grown up in the Dominion. He had been astounded, on his way through to Gisborne, to see small, disjointed pieces every here and'there, to see preparations for viaducts and then no viaducts. The correct plan was to .call tenders for the construction of viaducts and then, when the rest of the line was ready, they would have the whole complete construction.