RAILWAYS IN QUEENSLAND. "Nelson Examiner," July 22.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 28, 5 August 1871, Page 4

RAILWAYS IN QUEENSLAND. " Nelson Examiner," July 22.

We have before us some documents from which there is a great deal to be learned, bearing upon the present position of the colony. A vast scheme of public works is about to be carried out by means of borrowed money ; and we are told, by our directing public men that the effect of this scheme will be to advance the material prosperity of the colony to such an extent that the present burdens, excessive as they are felt to be (excepting !by the way in the eyes of Mr. Eitzherbert and the Independent, who rather like them than otherwise), being distributed over a larger surface, will be greatly lightened to each individual. We have always maintained that the adoption of the great Ministerial scheme of last session was marked by conspicuous rashness and indecent haste. A proposition to anticipate and mortgage the whole future resources of the colony, was a tiling which should have been approached with the utmost caution, and certainly demanded from the Legislature the most careful inquiry and unmistakeable evidence of its probable success. In every other Legislature, whose proceedings we have become acquainted with, the course we have referred to would certainly have been followed. < For it is impossible to forget that according to the statements of Ministers themselves and their supporters, the scheme means on the one hand success, but in the event of failure, total and long enduring brankruptcy. Our Legislature, we regret much to say, did not proceed in this deliberate and careful manner. The measures it was invited to adopt were not new to other colonies. It ought to have enquired, but made no enquiries. It did not pause to ask what result had attended similar operations elsewhere. It accepted the surmises and the guesses (for they were nothing better) of a Colonial Treasurer distinguished by the wildness and extravagance of his speculations. It abandoned all the prudence of business and the rules of logic. It arrived with most indecent haste and rashness at conclusions which leave the colony on the verge of a financial precipice, and will, in all probability, unless wiser counsels speedily prevail, plunge it into a disgraceful and hopeless insolvency. Let us see what we can learn elsewhere. About the year 1863, the colony of Queensland resolved that it would make its fortune. The usual rates of colonial progress were much too slow for so go-a-head a people, and Queensland accordingly resolved that she would go in for railways which should open up her interior, and confer upon her all the advantages which our rulers promise to us from similar Avorks in New Zealand. She accordingly borrowed large sums of money, which she expended in the construction of railways, and the introduction of immigrants. According to a return before us presented to both Houses of Parliament by the Governor of Queensland last year, it appears that their expenditure of borrowed money on railways up to the 31st October, I*B7o, amounted to £2,337,518. We have before us another document, a pamphlet entitled, " The Railway His-

tory and Prospects of the Colony of Queensland." It bears no signature, which is to be regretted ; but we accept, notwithstanding, the figures which it gives as correct. Inaccurate figures in a document published in Queensland, and dealing with Queensland matters, would at once be detected. It appears then that Mr. Eitz Gibbon, the Engineer of the Queensland railways, and of the Dun Mountain line of this place, estimated the annual gross traffic receipts of the three lines of railway in Queensland when finished at £274,636 ; and then deducting fifty per cent, for expenses, he adds : " Taking the remaining fifty per cent, of the gross receipts (viz., £137,318) as the amount of the nett earnings of the three lines, ifc will give 8 32 per cent, on the total capital of £1,650,000, so that after paying six per cent, interest on the same, the Government will have the remaining 232 per cent., or a sum of £35,318 to add annually to the general revenue of the colony." What pleasant things figures are when skilfully manipulated before the issue. Even in the hands of a dry professional man, with what rose coloured tints it is possible to invest them. But Mr. Eitz Gibbon's estimates, sanguine and illusory as they have proved to be, pale before the estimates of a heavenborn genius like our Colonial Treasurer. Mr. Eitz Gibbon, in calculating hi 3 traffic receipts, thinks it necessary to make some reference to data. But Mr. Yogel settles the matter thus : "Is it unreasonable to suppose," says he in his Financial Statement, " that at the end of the third year a sum of £10,000 will be the result over and above the working expenses from the railways opened upto that time ?" and then by a fine ascending scale of guesses he carries his profits up to the handsome sum of £250,000 a year at the end of the tenth year. There is an old saying when a man goes to build a house, that there are two periods for reckoning — one before the work is begun, the other after it is finished. Let us see how it stands as regards the returns from the Queensland railways. According to the official statistics of the year 1808, the general result from the construction and working of the southern and western line of the Great Northern Line, may be thus stated :—: — Ipswich to Dalby. £ Cost in 1863 1,565,359 Interest at 6 per cent. . £93,921 Receipts . . 55,459 Expenses . . 48,54.8 Surplus . . . 7,111 Deficit to general revenue . £86,810 Noetiiern Line. £ Cost in 1868 289,422 Interest at 6 per cent. . 17,365 Working expenses . 5,496 Eeceipts . . . 3,871 Add deficit .... 1,625 Deficit to general revenue £18,990 The total deficit in 1868 may be taken at £600 per mile on the lines then in working. Since then the annual loss is not diminishing, but if anything is on the increase. There is surely enough here to justify the Legislative Council of Queensland in the report it brpught up in 1866 on the railways, and ir^, which it " regretted that fuller information had not been sought by the Government before committing the colony to an expense resulting in such disastrous financial consequences." Our Executive Government, if it obtained any information on the subject of railways, certainly communicated none to the Legislature ; and our Parliament before shooting Niagara, instead of requiring facts and figures, was satisfied with the visions of Mr. Vogel. The time is surely coming when all who were concerned with such an unwise and unbusinesslike proceeding will remember their part in it with shame. "We recommend the following extract to the careful study of our readers. It has a very close application to our present condition and prospects. It can hardly be pretended by tlie most enthusiastic admirers of our railway system, that it has realized the predictions made in 1863, or the promises made as late as 1866 and 1867, both by the Government and Mr. FitzGHbbon. A loss of £600 per mile is in sad contrast with the assured two per cent, on the cost of construction contribution to the general revenue after the interest on that cost had been paid. But it was in vain that in 1863 the fallacious nature of the report and estimates on which »11 the expenditure that has been detailed was based, was pointed out, The absurdity of the traffic estimates was then emphatically insisted on. It was shewn that the

great bulk of the population in the districts affected was not a travelling one — that the nature of the people's avocations militated against such an assumption — that even in England branch lines constructed at so low a cost as £8,000 per mile in agricultural districts far more thickly peopled than any rural portion of Queensland, had been closed for lack of traffic, or carried on only at a heavy loss. The impossibility of a reliable estimate of cost under the circumstances — especially over the Eange — was dwelt upon, and the necessity for enquiry into the merits of the peculiar system itself and its alleged advantages, -waa urged. For a narrow gauge find light engines, were no novelty — their application to the railway traffic and speed assumed was. But fact and argument were alike whistled down the wind, and their most earnest exponents became marka for that malevolence of suppression, which was characteristic of Sir Gt-eorge Bowen's government, while his Ministry seemed too strong to be shaken. That it did aeetn so strong may be assumed from the course it pursued on this very question. We do not class ourselves among those who have a fanatical objection to railways in general. We do not mean to say that there are not districts in the colony where an iron road worked by steam is the best and cheapest. Nor do we even measure the paying character of such a road by its direct money receipts. But we maintain that a railway must pay in some way or other, directly or indirectly, or it is no use making it, our great object being to diminish our individual burdens by increasing the area of taxation. A railway that does not pay directly may pay indirectly, if it enables a population to subsist in a part of the country which without the railway would be a wilderness. The direct receipts of the railway in such a case, plus the taxation levied upon the increased population, or a portion of it of at all events mighfc justify such a work. But if a railroad will neither pay directly" nor when supplemented by indirect contributions, ifc had better be let alone. It is a dead loss to the community, and a waste of capital. Our fear is, seeing how little these questions are made the subject of careful investigation, that the public money will be wasted upon schemes utterly wild and unwarranted. There must be a limit somewhere, although it may be afluctuating one depending upon the cost of construction and working beyond which the iron road becomes too costly a luxury. Eor were it cheaper under all circumstances, we should find it everywhere superseding the ordinary road. The fear is that this limit will be too little studied, and that the tendency will be to rush iDto undertakings that will prove to be even more illusory. in their results than the railways of Queensland. And it is no use trying to shut our eyes to the fact that we are not in the same positioii as Queensland. That colony commenced its career of progress comparatively unincumbered. We start upon this hazardous experiment with a burden of debt already greater than that of any community in the world. Two hundred miles of iron road at an annual cost to the colony of £600 a mile, would make a nice little addition to our burdens. Are Aye not entitled to our " suppositions " as well as Mr. Vogel ? * We have experience at all events to show for ours, whereas Mr. Yogel had none to offer for his. With a falling revenue and fresh taxation imminent such a prospect is anything bub agreeable. It means that the burden of taxation would be simply intolerable, and what would happen next our readers may guess for themselves.