THE COMING SESSION

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18349, 13 September 1921, Page 2

THE COMING SESSION

OTAGO’S REQUIREMENTS. CONFERENCE WITH LOCAL M.P.’s. Following the custom of the last few years representatives of the Otago Expansion League, Dunedin City Corporation, Chamber of Commerce, and Otago Motor Club met local members of Parliament last night to discuss the requirements of the province in i iovv of the coming session. Mr Chas* Todd (president of the league) presided. The district representatives present were Messrs J. Horn, C. E. Statham, T. K. Sidey, E. Kcllett, and J. M. -Dickson. HYDRO-ELECTRIC DEVELOPMENT. The first subject dealt with was hydros electric development, which was in the hands of Mr Todd. Mr Todd recalled how after repeated attempts to secure the Hawea scheme the league had been obliged to abandon it and to take what was offered —

namely, Waipori and later on Teviot. Ho asked members to press for the connecting up of Monowai, Waipori, and Lake Coleridge. The Hon. Mr Coates, alter his visit to Otago, had given a promise that this would bo done, and when ttiis promise was carried out they would be able to draw on Southland as a reserve of power. The City Council, ho continued, might have to be assisted financially to develop Waipori, and the Government could either guarantee a loan, us it did in the- case Southland, or else find the money, which would be better still. , The council had had Mr Shacklock and *Mr Henderson consulting the Minister of Public Works, and the final draft of the City Council’s agreement had been forwarded to Wellington. It remained for the Minister toi adopt it, and he would ask members to see that that was done. In the meantime there would probably soon be a proposal for the development of the Fraser River to supply Cromwell, Alexandra, and Clyde, and if it could be brought into operation it would serve the district until the Teviot was developed. If they got the main stations linked up, all the intermediate districts could then be supplied, as far as the power would go. He asked members to press for a start on the Teviot scheme, as it would bo some years before it was completed. He understood that there were certain mining difficulties which,,would soon be out of the way. but if not the Government could buy the rights at a reasonable price If Otago had Canada’s proportion of one horse-power to every five of the population, they would have 30.000 horse-power developed instead of 8000. There was a long way to catch up. He asked members to place hydro-electric development before any other public works. FORESTRY SCHOOL’S LITCATION. Sir George Fenwick spoke in support of ths» proposed establisliraent of a School of Forestry at Canterbury College. He reminded .them that for many years the

country had neglected in a shameiul way to conserve its native forests. _ The authori- # ties, however, had at last listened to the representations of the Otago Expansion League and other bodies, and had set about the matter in a practical way and appointed a thoroughly skilled man to take charge. He had met Captain Ellis and knew what a valuable man the dominion had in him. When Captain Ellis set out to formulate a forestry policy he made a comprehensive survey of the position, and in an elaborate scheme set out what he thought should be done. Among his recommendations was one that a faculty of forestry should be set up, and that it should be associated with Canterbury College. His reasons for this were convincing. He pointed out that at Canterbury College. there was a School of Engineering, and showed how closely allied were the Engineering School and the School of Forestry* The speaker recounted the subsequent efforts of* Auckland to have the school established there, efforts which had unfortunately got the support of the University Senate. Sir Francis Bell saw that the matter had been made a dominion political question and that ho could not move in it. In the meantime the Auckland supporters had cabled to Mr Massey asking that the matter should not be.settled till he returned.' Mr Massey cabled to his colleague to have the position put before him, Sir Francis Bell agreed that it should stand over till his return. Everyone who wanted to see the matter settled on dominion lines should support the recommendation of Captain Ellis, for who should know better than be? Sir George urged members to look on the matter from a dominion view-point and. to do their best to harve the recommendation of the Commissioner carried out. ARTERIAL ROADS.

Cr John Wilson was entrusted with broaching the question of arterial roads. He said that the City Council was interested in the matter, .Legislation in regard to arterial roads was long overdue. The .incidence of taxation on motor traffic, -especially pleasure seeking motor traffic, certainly should be defined. With regard to the arterial roads within the city the council was prepared to put these in order as soon as it got the finance to do so. Outside thefcity, iu the Borough of Ureen Island, the council had to pay its quota to keep up the main road tnere. Tne commission apportioned the cost in 1917 and now in life! it had increased two and a-lialf times, the upkeep now costing the city £l5O a year. The macadamised road was out of date for motor traffic. A wheel or tyre tax for ordinary traffic was required. It was the pleasure-seeking cars that were doing most of the damage to the arterial roads.

Tne City Council had a very largo plant lor putting down hard roads and no doubt it the Covernnfcnt or local authorities asked for it the plant would bo available. Sir Joseph Ward had a Bill prepared 10 years ago, but for some reason the matter was dropped, lie trusted that the legislators would sec that some measure o£ relief was given and that it would be made possible lor file arterial roads to be put into thorough up-to-date order. Mr W. vVright, representing the Otago Motor Club, said that good roads were in-

dissolubly bound up with motor traffic. In Now Zealand the people were just waking up to the importance of the arterial road. North ol Auckland there was the district known as the “roadless north.” Even yet it was something of a feat to motor from Auckland to Wellington, and only in recent years had the road from Dunedin to Invercargill been put in such a condition llifc-t it could be traversed by motor in all weathers. It might be news to some of those present to know that streams even on the main road were still unbridged, and unbridgod streams were as big a bugbear and just as difficult to the motorist as

unformed roads. At the present time the Selwyn River, right on the outskirts of Christchurch, was unbridged, and representative motorists had urged time and

again that it should be bridged. During the winter motorists had to go away down to the Ellesmere bridge. In Now Zealand the road has become a serious riyal of the railways. Leaving out suburban traffic, the roads in the South Island might before long be more passengers than the trains. The number of passengers being transported over the roads was almost incredible. except to people taking notice of the traffic. In the United States of America 72,000,000 people were transported by motor, against 50,000,000 on the railways.

Further, the road was the pioneer of the railway. If it had not been for the motor the Roxburgh folk would still be considering when the railway was going to Beaumont. The road was the feeder of the railways. The railways could . only carry away what was landed at the stations — goods and passengers—and the better the road the more there was for the trains to carry. The “good road movement” and the motor combined were solving to a certain extent* the congestion in the cities. Good roads increased the productivity of the land, bringing the land on the margin of cultivation into cultivation. A further point ho would mention was that investigation showed that good roads and motors ro-n"t tncre-’s'-d ’ • Wright quoted figures showing the increased bus.no-,•* e . _. ' taken place in the r ai : d s ' arterial t-'fuT ” ■ ment had been talking for a long while about taxing .non. .. to that, it was the considered opinion of | motorists that a tyre tax was the only fair and just means of taxing the motorist, and he would like the parliamentary represents, lives to take note of that fact. Tho tyre tax taxed use, whereas the horse-power tax only taxed ownership. It was apparently tho intention of the Government to have only one road board, but the motorists of the' South Island believed it was necessary to have two boards, first of all in order that the South Island might, get a fair deal, and in the second place because the people in the South, by their enterprise and nionev, had made better roads than any dis-t-H in I 1 '" North Island, with the exception possibly of Taranaki. The South Island motorists contended that the South Tfbmd bad a right to its fair proportion

of the tax being spent in the South Island. The motorists should have proper representation on the road boards, and, further, they desired that the work of putting the roads in order should be started in several places at once, so that “a lot of them should not have died before the better roads reached them.” RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION.

Mr G. J. Errington was entrusted with the subject of railway construction. He said he noticed that the Acting-Prime Minister in Wellington the other day, in answering a deputation, classed three works as the most essential waiting to be gone on with. Among these three was the duplication of the Port' Chalmers railway. He would like to impress the Parliamentary representatives not to let the Acting-Prime Minister and others in Wellington change their minds. It was hardly necessary lor him, he thought, to stress the reasons why the duplication work should be gone on with. The .Railway Deportment itself recognised that the work was necessary in order to cater for the present traffic. Dunedin was without direct railway connection' with the wharves, and that would not be secured till the lino was duplicated and running along the foreshore. The duplication would be a big thing not only for the Harbour Board and the port, but for the whole province. Mr Errington went on to speak of the Roxburgh railway, saying that a letter had come to Dunedin in which it was stated that if there was, any cut in railway work this one would be the first to be stopped. The league asked the Parliamentary representatives to keep an eye on the position and press the Government to keep the railway going. It meant everything to the fruit industry. Those who had gone into the industry had mostly gone under a promise that the railway would be on the spot by the time their trees had grown. Another matter he would like to mention was the Tapanui branch railway, the service on which had been restricted so that now it took three days to make the trip to town and return instead of the .whole trip occupying a single day as previously. Mr Errington also asked the members to keep an eye on the Kingston railway with regard to exchrsion fares so that people would not have to stay in Invercargill on the way to Dunedin as was the case on the occasion of the South African football matches in Dunedin, TOURIST RESORTS.

Mr W. B. Steel, secretary of the Expansion League, spoke briefly about the tourist hacks in the Sounds district. He suggested as an alternative route to Milford'

from Wakatipu going up the Dart Valley, through the Routeburn, and down the Cloddau Valley into Milford. This would provide a round trip of unparalleled view, and one which he thought would not be surpassed anywhere in the world. They knew the money available for tourist purposes would bo small, but they had the promise of Mr Nosworthy that whatever the amount was it would be evenly spent on the two islands._ Ho hoped members would see that this promise was kept, because in the past the tourist resorts of Otago had been starved. The Milford track had been allowed to fall into such a state that it had become almost impassable, and it had taken a long time to get it into nearly tho condition that it should be.

Another suggested track was from the west arm of Lake Manapouri to Deep Cove and Smith’s Sound. This could be opened without cost to the department, because a private individual was prepared to open the track, conduct tourists over it, and put a launch on the Sound whiclf would give

tourists the benefit of 7t) miles of sheltered water, on condition that he was allowed to rent the track from the department for a few years to recoup himself for his expense. The fee would not exceed that for tho Mijford track, so there wou'd be no chance of exploitation. Seeing that the department had not any money with which to open new tracks, it should encourage private enterprise to open up the scenic wonders of which we were all so proud. TAXATION OF COMPANIES.

Mr C. S. Owen, president of the Chamber of Commerce, dealt with the subject of the taxation of companies. This, ho said, had a far greater bearing on the general prosperity of tho country than was commonly recognised. He expected that he would be asked how the revenue was to be raised. His answer was: Not by reducing the amount available for the expansion of business, which the present taxation was doing. Around _ the accumulated surplus of £23,730,000 circled increased freezing charges, increased building charges, and increased freights, which, together with the easy going born of the inflation of credit, had now landed us in the position that we could not land bur wool and meat in London at anything like pre-war prices. The land and income tax could not be increased from £1,321,722 in 1914 to £7,927,668 in 1920 without disastrous effects and without eventually strangling the market. It was comforting to know that tho surplus of £23,730.000 had mostly been expended in loans which were reproductive. and that thev could be made available as thev were repaid for the extinction of the £5.000.000 just borrowed. Mr Owen dealt with the dominion’s indebtedness as disclosed bv’the prospectus of the last loan, and, concluded by asking members to treat tax-paying companies as they would treat a tenant on a farm who was unable to pnv his rent owing to bad circumstances, and markets by not putting additional burdens on them at the present time. GOVERNMENT TRADING.

Government trading was discussed by Mr T. Somerville, who said this matter was originally brought before the Chamber of Commerce by a deputation from the Booksellers’ Association. The chamber had decided not only to. protest against the supply of school books and stationery, but to oppose the whole system of Government trading on the principle that Parliament was put into . power to manage national questions and that those who were- in business _ were in the

best position to manage business matters. Instancing Government control of sugar, Mr Somerville said he doubted whether it had conferred any real benefit on the consumers. Tne present position was that the chairman of the Board of Trade had stated that the earliest possible date at which sugar could be purchased at a lower price would be November 1, but he thought it was more likely to be January. In the meantime a large proportion of jam and other goods in which sugar was used,'could not be sold by the retailers because the public wanted them at reduced prices. He accused the Government of helping to cause unemployment in this way, stating that

jam-making departments had closed down, referring to the proposed supply of school books and stationery, and to Mr Parr’s statement that if they could save £40,000 —£50,000 it would be worth while, Mr Somerville asked, if he had taken inti) account the overhead charges attending purchase, transport, delivery, and selling. Seeing that the Government paid neither Customs duty, income tax, or harbour charges, this was a form of trading which should not be put into force. Touching on the Miramar houses, which he said were to cost £I2OO instead of £ICCO, Mr Somerville asked if it was not a tact that a special department had been created with a Housing Superintendent, a deputy superintendent, an assistant superintendent, aichitects, ana an army of clerks. Did the cost of the houses only represent labour, land, and material, or did it include a proper proportion of these overhead expenses. He urged members to consider the whole subject seriously and endeavour to find out what the position was. At agreed upon at the beginning of the meeting the replies of representatives were taken in private.