THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1910. ROADS AND BRIDGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 14301, 22 February 1910, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1910. ROADS AND BRIDGES.

Mr. W. T. Jennings, M.P., directs attention, in • the correspondence columns of to-day's Herald, to that " burning question," the roads and bridges of the North Island. When he says that '' South Islanders cannot understand the position until they live in the North Island for a few years," he is quite correct; and he would be equally correct if he had added that a great many South Island members have no overwhelming desire to understand the position. The suggestion of Mr. Jennings', reference to the misunderstanding of Northern conditions by South Islanders is that our public works and our lands administrations —the two, as he points out, are inseparable, owing to the Native Landsdepend upon the opinions and prejudices of members from the south of Cook Strait. Unhappily, this is the position, in spite of the fact that the North Island contains the greater population and sends a majority to the House of Representatives. If North Island; members unitedly did their duty to their constituents, sinking all party questions and differences in thcV reasonable demand for fair administrative and legislative consideration, we should speedily have our. most pressing insular problems very practically solved. Bub everybody knows that although all our Northern members speak very emphatically >>i these questions, their coalition very soon goes to pieces in the Parliamentary lobbies.- On the very day that the North Island representatives com-

bine firmly together to secure satisfaction, the Government will be converted to sound views, even though

South Islanders as a body do not understand why. The first proof of that conversion will be such a reconstruction of the Cabinet as will give to North Island Ministers the portfolios which contain the most important North Island business. To leave Land administration in the hands of a Minister from Southland or Canterbury, when the whole of the unsettled and available lands of the Dominion lie in the four Northern provinces ; and to remit to similar hands the great Public Works (including roads and bridges) problems of the country, when it is the. North which so urgently needs the improved means of communication almost universal in the South: is indefensible. The allocation of portfolios, as we have frequently urged, is an index of the attitude of the Government towards, the twin sections of the Dominion. ' The great spending Departments are held by Southern representatives, and will be thus held until our Northern members refuse to keep in office any Administration which refuses to recognise equitable, Northern claims.

The only Northern Minister who is given departmental authority in Northern matters is Mr. James Carroll, who cannot well be accused of having'acted in a manner calculated to arouse the impatience of the South Island. This presumably explains, the popularity, in the South, of his administration of the North Island Native Lands, for which administration, in the North, a good word is never heard. It is due to Mr. Carroll's peculiar methods, and to the countenance given him in the Cabinet by Ministers who know nothing of * Northern needs, that native lands have been immune from rating and have Wen a blight upon every road district wherein they are found; Southern roads, as Mr. Jennings reminds our readers, were generally laid out and completed with generous public assistance..." in the good old days of Provincialism." Were Auckland Province to-day an autonomous organisation, the public lands which must ultimately constitute an inexhaustible source of public wealth, through the taxpaying power of industrial production, would be charged, as in Canterbury of old, with the cost of roading and bridging. The provincial form has long changed but the equity and intelligence of the old provincial method should be still acknowledged. At the very least, the Government should take upon its strong -I shoulders the building of important bridges and the making of main roads, not attempt to throw these burdens upon the bent backs of struggling local authorities, crippled by the locking up of land and by the immunity from rates of the Crown and Native Lands which, however fertile, are financially like so many patches of unproductive swamp and barren desert. It is surely little enough to ask that good roads should be within reach of every settler's door, • wherever the country is suited to close settlement. Yet good roads are still a fanciful dream to the majority of our settlers, and are quite beyond the reach of many ,of our most ambitious local authorities. But what could be expected We can - understand why the Government allocates the spending portfolios to Southern Ministers when we see hundreds of thousands of pounds squandered on doubtful Southern/railways while Northern local bodies are sweated for contributions to roads and bridges which chiefly improve unrated Crown and Native Lands. And any man may understand the lethargy of the Government, its disinclination to open land, its sympathy with the taihoa policy, its steady shirking of road-making and bridge-building responsibility, who realises the stupendous task of roading the North and tho enormous influx of population which an encrgtic developmental policy would entail the hope for political railways in the South would vanish; the . day of the Southern politician would, permanently pass away. Tho South Island wants every penny-piece it can secure and will keep the North as a scrub-fed milch cow until the milk pail is taken away. Which brings us back to the original point, that if all our North Island members were in earnest when they talk of roads and bridges, of the Native Lands and of the urgent necessity for reform, they could end the difficulty and initiate just and strenuous administration the day Parliament reopens.