THE NEEDS OF THE NORTH

Northland Age, Volume 14, Issue 33, 26 April 1917, Page 6

THE NEEDS OF THE NORTH

[the following leading article which wc take from the “Waikato Times” will no doubt be of interest to our readers.]

THE Parliamentary Party has returned from North Auckland, the one time centre of colonisation, missionary effort, commercial enterprise and agricultural industry that has impotently watched the recession of the seat of Government from Kororareka to Auckland, and from Auckland to its present site near the windy oceanic waterway that separates this island from the S°uth. After half a century of more or less slumbrous dissipation of wealth derived from now almost exhausted kauri gum fields and forests that contributed but little towards the creation and maintenance of means of land communication, it is possible, and even probable,

hat this same North is now iwakingtothe dawn of an era if agricultural and pastoral ac:ivity and prosperity. That an effort will be made through the representations of those members favourably impressed by the possibilities of the country traversed, to unlock the Treasury for the purpose of assisting the foreshadowed development is also probable, and it is desirable that the claims of all districts the development of which has lagged behind the times should be carefully considered, and that due prominence should be given to those of the North. The statement made by Southern Members that there are equally bad road-, in the electorates they represent to those encounted in the Northern peninsula informs few ami profits no one. The notable fact in this connection is that generally speaking other provinces have good main roads and that most of these were originally made by sums voted by the Provincial Council or by Parliamentary grants. The North ha.-, no main road that even imagination can dignify by such a title Even in mid-summer the country may only be safely navigated, in many parts, by an amphibious machine such as the new army “tank”. The advice of Southern members to the few people holding our isolated outposts of agricultural and pastoral industry is “Rate yourselves!” It is true that under present rating values certain countries require most of their revenue for administrative purposes, but even doubling the rate would provide means all tco inadequate for the purpose and the proper maintenance of ‘scrappy’ roads in a broken country of considerable rainfall is a task calculated to daunt the most courageous road-makers. To our mind the one prescription for the North is man power to move it along—wider areas to rate—more native land^,—and there are vast and magnificent areas of these —have barred the way to settlement is both surprising and perplexing. Why undetermined native interests should be thus permitted to cumber the advance of progress no sane man can say. Empty and unproductive country is not only a shame upon any Government and a national wrong, it is a sin against humanity. The matter is of more than local importance. If the state be atrophied in one limb the national body suffers, and the ends and the middle of these Islands feel the stagnation in the economic circulation where it should he strong and vitalising. Is it necessary that, in order to determine interests by the slow processes of the courts, the lands effected should lie waste until a final judgment is delivered? If this be so, then legislation and legislators are equal futilities. All ■ over the Dominion waste lands are crying for population, and ' mocking the land hunger of would-be selectors. There are . national endowments, church endowments, educational endowments, Departmental lands, . Crown lands, and native lands lying waste or partially so from bad tenures and for want of ten- . ants, and what this great country . requires is a body of shrewd and ; capable men to realise these dead assets. Our share of the war burdon will be a heavy financial responsibility. We must have more rates, but equally so we must have more ratepayers, and, for the purpose of providing land, any sort of land, all sorts of land, for the future ratepayers, a strong ■ National Assets Realisation Board, the first aims of which shall be settlement combined

with profitable production. If the war is teaching the world one great lesson, it is this, that organisation effect is the only form of effort that will avail when the drums beat to Armageddon.