RAILWAY FINANCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13673, 14 February 1908, Page 4

RAILWAY FINANCE.

At the meeting of the Council of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, held yesterday afternoon, a report upon the railway finance of New Zealand was presented by the Railway and Shipping Committee. In this the old question of what proportion of the item "additions to open lines" should be debited to the revenue account was gone into, this in reference to the independent criticisms by which Mr. Samuel Vaile, in Auckland, and Professor Rossignol, in the Denver University. Both claim that our lines are being worked at a very heavy loss, as shown by the railway statements annually presented to Parliament, .obscured by. peculiar and erroneous"methods of book-keeping. Speaking at Paeroa on Wednesday evening Sir Joseph Ward claimed that " if \ the Government wanted to take money out of the people they could do so, instead of handing back a large percentage every year as they were doing in the shape of reduced 1 rates, etc. He could with one stroke of the pen, if it were a proper thing to do, ensure to the people of the country a return of 10 per cent.; per year on the railways, but he would not do it." That, of course, is not the point, as nobody knows better than the Premier. The point is : Are we losing more heavily every year on the railways than we are led to suppose, and are we misled by erroneous accountancy? If this is so, then we ought to know it, so that the public may realise the actual position and be prepared to meet it in a businesslike manner. For it is plain that we cannot continue for ever to make up a loss asserted to amount to four millions sterling in the past decade by the gentle process of borrowing, which is what is meant by transferring charges from revenue to loan account. If our critics are wrong, the Premier should show where they are wrong; if they are right, our methods should be corrected, and we should see in every financial balance-sheet just what the railways are costing us. Unless the question is thus frankly and fully faced, it will be generally believed that the worst that can be said of our railway finance, is true, and our public credit will suffer accordingly. Whereas, if the whole matter is gone into, and any delusion under which the public is labouring is dissipated, the result must be to strengthen the movement for the construction of profitable lines, and of profitable lines only, and for the discontinuance of the system under which the .country is still being saddled with railways which can never be expected to pay.