THE PUBLIC WORKS VOTE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21978, 13 June 1933, Page 8

THE PUBLIC WORKS VOTE

The announcement which the Acting Prime Minister made last week that the Government's expenditure on public works during the current year will be half a million in excess of that for the past financial period has had the not unlooked-for effect of prompting local claims upon the Ministerial consideration. The expenditure, Mr Coates said, would be

mainly on highways, bridges, and certain public buildings. This does not suggest that a very large amount is likely to be allocated for expenditure on any one building. Even between allocation and expenditure there may, as the community has reason to know, be a distinctly big gulf fixed. The importance, however, of securing a commitment by the Government to expenditure, on any public building will be generally recognised, and nowhere more widely recognised than in Wellington. It is not wholly surprising, therefore, that, taking time by the forelock, a deputation has waited on the Minister of Public Works with requests that certain works in Wellington should be undertaken by the Government —requests which, the Minister was informed, had the support of the Labour members of Parliament in the Wellington district. One of the requests was of a modest character —that the renovation of a number of Government buildings, which were represented to be in urgent need of repair, should be put in hand. Another was that the new Wellington railway station should be proceeded with on the same lines as the National Museum and Art Gallery. The erection of the new railway station in Wellington will, however, be a very costly undertaking. The construction of it will, it may reasonably he suggested, have to be deferred until the public finances are much more buoyant ■ than ‘ they now are. For this desirable development we may, fortunately, not have to wait so very long, since, if we apprehend correctly the comment which the Minister of Finance has made upon the operations on the public account, the revenues for the past year totalled £938,000 more than had been anticipated. Most of the larger centres in the Dominion are likely to be able to advance more or less plausible claims for the erection of public buildings. The claim, however, for the erection of the Post Office in Dunedin occupies a footing that should put it beyond the risk of its being disturbed. As a correspondent pointed out yesterday morning, there is another public building—the Maternity Hospital—that is overdue, but to the construction of the Post Office as soon as funds are available the Prime Minister has definitely committed the Government. No other substantial Government building, he said last year, will be given precedence over the Dunedin Post Office contract. It should be necessary only to remind the Government of this assurance in order that no doubt may exist as to the substantial public building upon which the funds of the Public Works Department will first be expended?