PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17338, 9 December 1919, Page 8

PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

The emphasis which the Prime Minister laid in his speech at Newmarket last evening upon the importance of completing the principal railway lines now under construction will be accepted by reasonable people as an evidence of his enthusiasm for public works development. But since an attempt has been made to portray Sir Joseph Ward as the apostle of reform in railway construction, it is permissible to compare the policies of the two parties. Mr. Massey advocates concentrating all the energies of the State and all the public money that can be raised upon the development of the national resources of the Dominion by building roads and railways and harnessing waterpower. Sir Joseph Ward would have the State divide its attention between public works and the nationalisation of several industries now efficiently conducted by private enterprise. Moreover, the public works programme of the Opposition rests upon a miscalculation of from 50 to 100 per cent, of the cost of completing the railway system. It is therefore totally unreliable. But, his friends explain, Sir Joseph Ward is definitely out for a reform of the public works system. They allude presumably to the pleasing generalities with which the Leader of the Opposition enlivened the debates on the Budget and the Public Works _ Statement. They overlook one point in these speeches. After Sir Joseph Ward had condemned the "old policy" of distributing railway votes, he declared that the views he then proclaimed represented the judgment of 15 years, but he had never been able to" get his way over it." Exactly! And if Sir Joseph Ward were in office again to-morrow he would not " get his way over it." He would continue his old policy of voting money that was never intended to be spent, and forget his election-time enthusiasm for public works reform. 1