AVOIDABLE HARDSHIPS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23397, 13 July 1939, Page 12

AVOIDABLE HARDSHIPS

The hardships and inconveniences being suffered by farmers at Whenuapai should not have been allowed to happen. Mail services interrupted, the delivery of stores made impossible, the school closed —these things seem more appropriate to the depths of the backblocks in the bad old days than to a district within easy reach of Auckland City in this year 1939. The causes are easily found. Roads never capable of standing up to such a test have been cut to pieces by heavy traffic to and from the military aerodrome under construction at Whenuapai. Severe, but hardly unseasonable, weather has come to intensify the conditions and to hamper the work of putting the roads back into a usable state. If there had been no way of avoiding what has happened, there would be nothing to do but offer sympathy to the unfortunate settlers and wish them a speedy release from their discomforts. The new aerodrome is a work of national importance, and it might be argued that the people now in a virtual state of siege were being called upon to suffer it for the common good. But none of these arguments can really stand. One of those affected hit the nail on the head exactly when he said: "The question of adequate access should have been decided before the work at the aerodrome was commenced." There is no answer to that. This is supposed to be the age of planning, in which State departments are to manage the affairs of the individual better than he could possibly do himself. In the little instance cited one of the greatest State departments has got itself and a number of innocent people into a sorry mess for want of a little elementary forethought. The best thing it can do now is to marshal some of that marvellous plant of which the country is always being told and rescue Whenuapai from its woeful plight in record timo„