PUBLIC WORKS STATEMENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12698, 29 October 1904, Page 4

PUBLIC WORKS STATEMENT.

The Public Works Statement, which has 1 been at last presented, to the House, nominally provides for expenditures amounting to slightly over £1,400,000; allowing for the £150,000 paid to Midland Railway debenture-Holders, this is a reduction of £220,000 on the figures of the previous year. Needless to say in the making of this reduction, called economy, the North is the real loser. The Main Trunk, which is a national and not a provincial undertaking, although the Government insists on treating it as a North Island line, is set down for £150,000, against the £174,480 expended last year. This would be bad enough, for, in spite of Mr. Seddon's convenient loss of memory, connection between Auckland and Wellington was distinctly promised by the end of 1904. But the North of Auckland and the GisbomeRotorua are each assigned the wretchedly insufficient sum of £10.000; the Kawakawa-Grahamtown is similarly dealt with. The effect of this will be plain when the very little advance made on the Helensville line by the recent expenditure of £11,788, and on the GisborneRotorua with £14,330 is remembered. The Paeroa- Waihi would certainly have fared no better had it not been for the special arrangement made for the pushing on of the line with private capital. We may therefore say that the actual Parliamentary provision made for Northern railways is confined to the paltry sum of £30,000. The South Island is treated altogether differently. The BlenheimWaipara gets £25,000 the Midland £60,000, the Ngaherc - Blackball £10,000, the Greymouth-Coal Creek £10,000, the Greymouth-Hokitika-Eoss £15,000, the Otago Central £50,000, the Heriot Extension £8000, and the Catlins-Seaward Bush £8000 i none receive appreciably less

than their last year's expenditures, and several; of them considerably more. Altogther, railways are set at £484,000, of' which the North has really only the scantiest share. Roads total over £350,000 on paper, but we know by experience that getting the money is another process. Our readers will agree with us that the Public Works Statement of 1901 is one of the most unjust and sectionally partisan ever presented to Parliament.