THE CATLINS CELEBRATIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 11

THE CATLINS CELEBRATIONS.

It may be accounted a fortunate thing for the settlers in the Lower Catlins district that the opening of the extension of the railway line to Ratanui should have been fixed for this particular season of the year. The; circumstance is one that has enabled them to provide the Minister of Railways with ocular demonstration of a sufficiently convincing kind of the serious disabilities to "which the absence of railway communication subjects them. Sir Joseph iWard is not likely, we imagine, speedily to forget the incidents of bis drive from Ratanui to Tahakopa .Valley on Thursday evening last, and of the return journey on the following morning, and he niust have taken away with him from .^he district a vivid realisation ' of the grievances which the settlers possess in being entirely dependent for communication with their' .markets upon a road that in the winter months is, when it ; is not absolutely impassable, negotiable only with great difficulty and at considerable personal risk. We dcr not suggest that the residents in the Lower Catlins Valley a,re by any means singular in the respect that they have a well-founded complaint against the Government on the score of the neglect to supply their legitimate demand for reasonable means of access to their holdings. It is only too true that their situation is j that also of hundreds of settlers in other partis of the colony, and notably in the North Island, where, however, the weather is milder and the roads are not reduced to quite the deplorable condition of that over which Sir Joseph Ward was conducted last week. But it is not only because the settlers labour under manifest disadvantages, as those beyond the reach of the existing line do, that the claim for the prosecution of the Catlins River railway as vigorously as the state of the public finances will allow may be validly pressed. The fact is that the colony itself is suffering a severe loss through the non-completion of the line. Sir Joseph Ward acknowledged in the speech he delivered at

Tahakopa Valley that a railway through the magnificent Catlins forest would be at once revenueearning, and that, while the effect of the construction of the line would be directly to develop an extensive timber trade, the country is of such a description as, when the timber is cleared off it, to be admirably suited for tillage. What, however, is the position at the present time? The line which will shortly be made available for traffic to Ratanui will not be operated to its maximum earningpower for the simple reason that it is stopped several miles short of the point at which tlie forest wealth of the valley can be tapped. Valuable timber, for which a demand exists, is being destroyed leecause it is impossible, owing to transit difficulties, to get it brought to market. This is happening, too, at a time when it is apprehensively being noticed that the timber supplies of the colony which have served the community in the past have been reduced so seriously that their exhaustion is regarded as a matter of comparatively few years. In these circumstances it is truly a crying shame, as one of the speakers remarked the other night, that so much valuable timber should have gone up in smoke in the Catlins district in the years that are past. And it may legitimately be urged that it has become a matter of colonial importance that a line of railway which will make the axe to be profitably applied to tens of thousands of acres of milling timber should be constructed with all the speed that is possible, due consideration *=feeing given to the claims of other railways of the first importance.

In what he said at Tahakopa Valley and Owaka, Sir Joseph Ward did not supplement in any appreciable measure what he had told the public ill other speeches in the past lew weeks. The fact that the policy of the Government for the ensuing session has not been disclosed has not unnaturally been the occasion of some comment, but the electors will generally recognise the !'ej*Bonabkiie&s of Sir Joseph Ward's.

j claim,' under existing conditions, for ' a certain amount of consideration for j the Administration. The Premier, , who has practically decided the policy of the Government since Mr Ballance's death, and who constitutionally is the Minister responsible i for its policy, has had no opportunity j for several weeks of conferring with j his colleagues upon political ques- | tions, and under these circumstances ! the Government is apparently not yet possessed of a policy for the session. We do not know that there is anything very remarkable about that — the Government last year had no defined policy to speak of at the beginning of the session, and, as its own supporters as well as its opponents have repeatedly complained, the time of Parliament was occupied for weeks in the discussion of trivialities while Ministers were preparing their policy, — but we recognise that this year there is some excuse for a state of things in respect of which in other' years the Government was not entitled to claim any indulgence. But though we may not be surprised that Ministers have not agreed upon any programme for the year, it is somewhat curious, as well as not a little amusing, to find them openly disagreeing concerning a question which must in the near future be the subject of legislation. Sir Joseph Ward is, however, in the light of his latest utterances, convinced of the benefits of a bicameral system not less strongly than Mr Seddon is convinced of, as he would say, its obsoleteness and its inapplicability to the circumstances of the colony. Whilo the two leading members of the Cabinet are at variance in their views upon this important point it is hardly likely that any measure of reform can be looked for, and that is unfortunate, for the public is, there is no reason to doubt, profoundly dissatisfied with the present arrangement. There are probably not 1 per cent, of the electors favourable to the preservation of the system. of nominated membership of the Upper ITourfo thai: now obtains. The only point about which they are not xcsolved is as to whether the Legislative Council should be

ended or mended, and Aye are quite at one with. Sir Joseph Ward in the belief that the change that must be made should not be in the direction of sweeping away the second Chamber. The difficulties that would beset any attempt to abolish what is an integral feature of the Constitution of the colony would conceivably be insuperable, but, even if. the Council could be ended more easily than seems at all likely, we should still hold that as a second Chamber that adequately performed its duties would act as a check upon hasty legislation, of which New Zealand has had too many examples, and would be, in fact, a revising Chamber, the bicameral system is, as Sir Joseph Ward says of it, the safer one.