ANOTHER STATE GRAB

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25797, 19 March 1945, Page 4

ANOTHER STATE GRAB

The protest of the Otago and Southland Acclimatisation Societies against the proposal of the Department of Internal Affairs to take over certain territories has gone unheeded. The Council of the Southland Acclimatisation Society was, on the chairman’s report of the results of a joint Otago-Southland deputation to the Minister of Internal Affairs, left in no doubt upon that matter. Indeed, the day has been fixed when the chosen area, or that portion of it which comes within the Lakes District Acclimatisation Society’s jurisdiction, will pass under the direct control of the Department of Internal Affairs. The Lakes District Society, which has possibly, owing to its limited revenues, never been a tower of strength in acclimatisation, some time ago made the decision to hand over its functions to the Government. The considerations that prompted this voluntary cession to an importunate and acquisitive State department were, in this special case, sufficiently strong. Queenstown, as the centre of the magnificent scenic district of the southern lakes, can benefit from the tourist trade; and the tourist trade can be encouraged by Government patronage, as the Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Parry, has been making clear. There is nothing sinister in a compact between the Lakes District Acclimatisation Society and the Government which both parties believe will be advantageous to the district. But if not a sinister, it is certainly an objectionable, aspect of this deal that the Department of Internal Affairs should, in persuading the people of the lakes district to surrender their long-established rights to control game and fish conservation, include arbitrarily in the scope of its acquisition portion of the acclimatisation territories of two other societies —neither of which is in the least persuaded that it should

relinquish its rights. The case of the Department of Internal Affairs for extending the frontiers of its peaceful conquest to include forcibly some of the most productive and potentially valuable territory of the ©tago and Southland societies has not any particular weight. There is not a suggestion that these societies, within the rather narrow concept of acclimatisation work in New Zealand, have failed in their responsibilities. Both, on 'the contrary, have provided generations of anglers and other sportsmen with an excellent and varied choice of fish and game, and at a cost in licence fees that in any other country in the world would be regarded as incredibly low. And these societies, to add to their concern, have not yet been informed even of the exact extent of the territorial requirements of the Department of Internal Affairs. It is scarcely necessary to point out that they will be gravely hampered in their activities if such resources as the Otago Society’s rainbow trout streams, which depend on the Lake Hawea area, are removed from local to State jurisdiction. But societies of sportsmen, lacking political influence, will find it more difficult even than some more closely-knit organisations to make effective a protest against State acquisitiveness —and such protests if they lack the right political support now seem doomed to failure, however strongly voiced they may lie.