THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 1908. THE NEGLECTED NORTH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13690, 5 March 1908, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 1908. THE NEGLECTED NORTH.

Sin Joseph Ward, speaking with nil the authority of the Leader of a great Tarty and of the Prime Minister of a long-continued Administration, insisted at Dargaville that the North of Auckland was not neglected, and that the one desire of his Cabinet was to deal fairly with all parts of the Dominion. He quoted figures and votes which might well convince the electors of Invcreargill •—who do not know the amazing difference that may arise between sums voted and sums expended— that if there is one electorate in the two islands which is favoured by those who sit in high places it is the Kaipara, and that if there is one section of the country which ought to be grateful to those who control the public purse it is - that which lies north of the Waitemata. If the statements which the Prime Minister makes in the South, as to the way in which the North is treated, reflect in. any degree the tone of his recent speeches in our Northern Peninsula we do not greatly wonder that his Southern hearers hud any political conscience they may have greatly soothed, and that they become confirmed in their habitual policy of accumulating in the South the bulk of the expenditure of our common funds. There will be ample time during the present year to analyse and compare the revenue and expenditure figures of the various districts of these islands, nob as they appear; upon the Estimates and for

one year only, but as they have actually materialised during the seventeen long years in which the'party now in power has made Governments and controlled Administrations. For the moment—and because to those who know them facts are greater than figures—ve will ask the people of Dargaville, of Kaipara, of the Northern Peninsula, to say what has been done for them by the Administration of which Sir Joseph is the present head, in comparison with what is notoriously done in Southern districts' and in proportion to their immense contributions to the general revenues. They will immediately say— every well-informed man in the country, including the Prime Minister himself, knows—that the North of Auckland has contributed more to and received less from the Consolidated Revenues in proportion to its population than any other long-settled section of the Dominion. For in the North of Auckland the settlement of the country practically began ; in the face of innumerable difficulties that settlement has gone stubbornly and steadily on. It is not a new district but a very old district. It is not a district which has depended upon State aid but a district which has contributed enormously to the wealth of the country —both publicly and privately. The North of Auckland extension of the Main Trunk is a line which has paid its way, mile by —and of what other lines can this be said?— it has crept along at the rate of about a mile a year, and its rising hope of greater progress depends wholly upon the Administrative fear of Northern discontent. And why is the North of Auckland discontented?' For even Sir Joseph Ward will hardly deny that it is discontented even though he may cavalierly deny that it has any cause. The North is discontented because all these years it has been one of the milchcows for those " fair" allocations of public money which have covered every settled district in the South Island with good roads an J ample railways, and which have 'eruibled improved estates to be resumed for closer settlement, while in the North locked-up land lies unti'led and unimproved. The North of Auckland, although an old district, although such an immense contributor to the Consolidated Revenues, although so largly settled by pioneers who still hope for better things and more equitable administration, is worse roaded, worse railwayed, and more burdened with locked up land than any . district of anything the same capacity in the whole South Island. Its roads are a scandal to the Public Works Department, and generally impassable in the winter. Its railways have a ridiculous mileage, and are treated more grudgingly than the average back-country branch in the South. The Native Lands lie across its chest like a nightmare, and it is the main sufferer by the pretentious endowment" policy which Sir Joseph Ward fathered, though he did not invent it. There have been millions of pounds available to resume land for closer settlement in Canterbury and in Sir Joseph's own province of Otago ; but what has been done, during all these seventeen years, to open up to the Northern settler the rich lands that the Maori could not use himself and that the Pakeha could only use as a tenant of the Maori? If there is going to be a change in the administrative treatment of the North, well and good; but our hopes of fairer treatment by the present Government are not strengthened when we hear Sir Joseph Ward proclaiming to the four winds of heaven that the North -of Auckland has been generously dealt with, and that the Government has been as just and fair and equitable as it has known how to be.