THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1920. PUBLIC WORKS REFORM.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17652, 13 December 1920, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. MONDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1920. PUBLIC WORKS REFORM.

One of the controversial points made by the Wellington Progress League in its exceedingly parochial propaganda has been effectively answered by the Minister for Public Works. The league complained that the district whose interests it serves was not receiving a fair share of roading expenditure out of the Public Works Fund. Mr. Coates points out that the roading expenditure depends to some extent upon the willingness or ability of local bodies to finance development work, and thus earn the State subsidy. The moral for our Southern friends iB plain enough. If they want more roads or better roads let them, practice self-help. If they are so fortunately circumstanced as to need no new roads, let them refrain from criticism intended to embarrass the undeveloped portion of |he Dominion which labours under the incalculable handicap of defective communications, and is struggling, with admirable self-reliance, to attain to the roading standard that the South has enjoyed for very many years. The salient feature of the public works situation is that Auckland is the undeveloped province of New Zea land. Settlement in the North has already far outdistanced communications, and, as recent departmental reports show, there are in the province over 2,000,000 acres of idle land, utilisation of which depends upon the construction of roads and railways. The back blocks of the Dominion are for the most part in Auckland Province, If the Public Works Fund is to be used for the development of national resources it is natural and inevitable that a very large proportion of it should be spent in the northern portion of the North Island-

For this reason the basis of the Wellington Progress League's criticism is quite inadmissible. Public works money should not be allocated on a population basis. If it were, it would be the perquisiteSf the cities, and roads and railways would be multiplied'within a narrow circle of settlement instead of being driven into the idle land beyond the field of close settlement. If Wellington desires to make the census govern the distribution of the Public Works Fund it should have raised its claim in Parliament six weeks ago.. The Minister then laid down the principle very definitely that population was not the determining consideration with his department, and defined his duty as being to spend money in districts giving the best return from a. national point of view. Does Wellington accept this principle, already endorsed by Parliament, and if not, what is the alternative'] It is, as far as New (Zealand experience goes, a sordid scramble for votes, in which district interests are poorly served and the national interest not at all, in which all larger considerations of public policy are obliterated and Governments are driven to indulge in petty subterfuges to flatter parochial vanity. One of these the Wellington Progress League condemned, the practice of putting items on the Estimates which are not intended to be spent. For many years the Herald has protested against this palpable deception, and will continue to do so whether the North or the South is the chief loser. Its quarrel with the league is that the league ignores the honest and entirely disinterested attempt which Mr. Coates is making to reform the public works system, and by its indirect attack upon the railway policy, makes itsejf a party to the very abuses it deplores.

It is a very serious question for progress leagues and kindred bodies how far they can follow the parochial lead given by the Wellington body without imperilling the new policy propounded by Mr. Coates. They all know the defects of the old system, that it saddled

the country with a multitude of unfinished railways, encouraged dissipation of effort, and subordinated economy and efficiency to political influence. They know .equally well that the Minister is reorganising his department and has proclaimed a new policy, national in its scope It is the duty of all district organisations which desire public works reform to range themselves solidly behind the Minister and support his programme, even if it falls short of their hopes, as, in some respects, it must dash all provincial ambitions. Almost every progress league and railway organisation in the country has demanded public works reform. The reform has now been promised and it deserves a fair trial. Criticism like that of the Wellington League, which contains no recognition of the new policy and is based upon the unregenerate past of the Public Works Department, is neither reasonable nor fair. If that is the temper of the provinces a national public works policy will prove an impossible conception, and the very abuses which are now deplored will be perpetuated by the pressure of over-zealous partisans.