Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943 RELIEVING CONGESTION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 28 June 1943, Page 4

Nelson Evening Mail MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1943 RELIEVING CONGESTION

IN 1880 there were about 40 people in the North Island for every 60 in the South. Forty years later, in 1920, these figures were almost actly reversed. Since then trends have gone further in favour of the North Island until, in 1941, it was estimated to contain nearly twothirds of the Dominion’s population. That movement was a natural one in which geographical position, climate, fertility of soil, better rail and road communications, and hydroelectricity all played their part In our generation, too, a large portion of the North Island has ridden to prosperity on the cow’s back. Since the war began there has been a further sharp movement of people from south to north, created in the main by emergency and somewhat artificial conditions due to total mobilisation. Because of more developed facilities and because its two main ports are the Dominion’s principal overseas shipping terminals, the North Island offered natural advantages for the location of the bulk of war activity, both military and industrial. After Japan set the Pacific alight and when a South Pacific Command was created the Americans established a base, not in New Zealand as a whole, but in the North Island. The combined concentrations of our own and of our Allies’ war effort have thrown a strain on some of the North Island centres—chiefly Auckland and Wellington—which they are finding it increasingly difficult to bear. In Wellington this has been accentuated by a marked tendencynoticeable- before the war—to centralise Government administration in the capital city. People will always flow to where the jobs are created. Servicemen and women and industrial war workers live where the camps, factories and training centres are established. . This huddling together of civil and service population in circumscribed areas is not a healthy trend. To a certain extent it is inevitable; in some degree it is reversible. The Government. however, deeply immersed in other problems, does not appear disposed to explore the opportunities for giving relief, particularly to women and children who have fol-

lowed the breadwinner to a new job only to be forced to live under pitiable housing conditions. An attempt was made by the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Holland) to open up this question for unprejudiced non-parochial discussion in Parliament on Friday, but he did not make much apparent headway. He might have done better had he pointed out clearly that he was not then arguing the case for long-term decentralisation of industry.—which must come in New Zealand—but urging immediate relief for those congested areas where military activity has been superimposed on expanding civil development due to war. Mr Fraser conceded that the proposal was eminently desirable if it were practicable. Mr Nash, who, since his return from Washington, has sometimes been prone to display impatience with opinons other than his own, took his stand on the principle that choice of site must be conditioned by where commodities could be most economically produced (and, presumably, services most economically rendered) bearing in mind the facilities available. Normally this is sound policy. In the circumstances now prevailing it needs to be applied with considerable elasticity, if only because much of the activity causing congestion is only fleeting and not economic, however necessary it may be. Military commanders—both our own and American—will naturally prefer to make their training quarters as close as possible to the zone of operations. War industries are governed by a somewhat similar consideration only in a lesser degree. But there are all kinds of other establishments, both military and civil, which would be equally favourably located in the South Island as in the North. Hospitals, convalescent depots and training schools of various kinds are some of them. Most of the sites for these have been chosen not by Cabinet Ministers but by Departmental officers with a North Island complex. Nelson, for example, forty minutes away from Wellington by air and ten hours or less by boat, is very centrally situated in relation to the rest of New Zealand, yet departmental vision rarely extends to this side of Cook Strait. In the Nelson district there are buildings already in existence, some with attractive grounds attached, which have been offered for use but which have been rejected because “they are too far away.” Too far from what? Other South Island centres have doubtless had similar experiences. The need for relieving some of the pressure on the North Island is evidently not in dispute; it should not be after citation of the conditions under which some of the internal migrants are living in order to be near their work or their families. Opportunities for providing such relief might prove more encouraging than the Government thinks if it would instruct its officers to seek them. A survey undertaken in conjunction with those possessing local knowledge of suitable facilities should prove most helpful.