THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, July 29, 1946. GREAT EXPECTATIONS?

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26216, 29 July 1946, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES Monday, July 29, 1946. GREAT EXPECTATIONS?

The full announcement this morning by the Minister of Public Works, Mr R. Semple, of the ten-year plan for Dunedin will be awaited with interest. Reconstruction is the order of the day in every country which was affected by the war. It is right and proper, and it is also natural and inevitable, that New Zealand should undertake a programme of works upon a comprehensive scale. Such an Undertaking could owe much to Government leadership, but it is not possible for the Government to claim credit for the original inspiration to plan and build, which in every community in the Dominion, however small, has been awaiting practical release “ when the war is over.” New Zealand, nearly a year after that awaited surcease, has scarcely started upon the great task. There is a shortage of practically everything necessary to its commencement. But New Zealanders have been busy with preparations. In Dunedin the city did not await the war’s end before embarking upon a major hydro-electric expansion scheme; proposals have reached an advanced stage for a new transport system, for a new highway and housing development beyond the city’s encircling hills; University and Hospital have large projects either already completed, or awaiting the materials which would permit a start to be made. The city’s proposed immediate expenditures on new undertakings are much above £1,000,000; the University’s schemes, for 20 years ahead, will probably cost more; the Hospital Board’s plans are reaching to the same level. It scarcely requires to be - said that such projects as are outlined above owe nothing to Government planning, nor do civic proposals in the environs of the city which have been devised by country and borough councils, town boards, and so on. The Government will be asked, as of right, to support some of these schemes, but as the provider, not the planner. For public works, which are the constant service rendered by the State machine to the community which nurtures it, planning is a normal function. A lacuna of six years in constructive public works has meant that plans upon a pattern as ambitious as Vogel’s at another climacteric in the Dominion’s history should be already at the practical stage. The Government will not, of course, accept responsibility for the shortages which to-day are stifling New Zealand reconstruction and enterprise. These are primarily caused by the war, but they have been accentuated and aggravated by the legislative zeal of the septuagenarian Stateists who are running the Government. It has to be pointed out that the over-expansion of uneconomic industries, and a labour system which has promoted industrial unrest and inflation, have brought this country to the peculiar position to-day that the national schemes so far announced are designed merely to overtake shortages unprecedented in housing and buildings generally, and in fuel and power—with a resumption of works programmes, public and civic, which were interrupted by the war. Mr Semple, who will assemble, this morning by fanfare and promises a representative assemblage of Dunedin interests, has the opportunity to set forth a dynamic programme for the development of the district. His ten-year plan will reveal, by the extent of its creative vision, the capacity of the Government to lead the New Zealand people in the period ahead. They will not be satisfied by orotund phrases and plans at second-hand.