SOUTHLAND LEAGUE

Otago Witness, Issue 3148, 15 July 1914, Page 6

SOUTHLAND LEAGUE

ADDRESS BY MR W. D. HUNT. RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION AND BORROWING. INVERCARGILL, July 6. Mr W. D. Hunt, who was a member of the Public Service Commission and who is now a member of the Board of Agriculture, opened up an interesting question in the course of an address to the council of the Southland League to-day. This league, which has been promoted to advance the interests of the district,_ is now in the course of formation. During the last month nearly a dozen country branches have been established, and the membership is now nearly 500. In giving an idea of the lines on which he thought the league’s work should go, Mr Hunt said that it must endeavour to influence legislation. He then spoke in special reference to railway construction. He had been 23 years in Southland, and in that period the railways in the district had been constructed at the rate of two miles and a-half a year. Railway construction was not carried on rapidly enough. Some people said that the fetate was borrowing too heavily. In his own opinion it was not borrowing rapidly enough. In this country the State had largely restricted private enterprise by establishing a State monopoly in large fields of industry—for example, railways and water power. In most other countries these enterprises w’ere privately conducted, and enormous sums of money were raised, by private corporations to finance them. Mr Hunt cited Canada, and showed that in Canada the Government, the railway companies, manufacturers, and mortgage and investment companies had borrowed • on the London Stock Exchange £250,000,000 in the seven years from 1906 to 1913. In addition, Canada borrowed in the United States and in Paris, and he estimated that the aggregate amount of outside capital introduced into the country in the seven years mentioned was £500,000,000. In New Zealand there was practically no large borrower apart from the State, and in the period of seven years he had mentioned New Zealand had borrowed about £13,000,000, or £l3 per head of population as compared with Canada’s £BO. The borrowing of the Argentine in London and the United States was also carried on on a scale of great magnitude, and the amount per head was at least £2O as against New Zealand’s £l3. He contended that New Zealand should show greater enterprise in developing her resources with outside capital. His next point was that districts which wanted railways should show their faith in them by undertakng to rate themselves in order to make up any deficiency in the earnings of a line if a deficiency occurred. A provision requiring this undertaking would prevent the building of unprofitable lines, of which examples could easily be cited. Mr Hunt passed on to urge that, in a measure, the land grant system followed in other countries could be adopted in New Zealand. In Canada private companies were assisted to construct the railways bv grants of land from the State. In this country the Government had power under the Lands for Settlement Acts to resume compulsorily privately-owned land. Everybody approved of that policy, and he believed it was right. Why, then, should tbe Government not acquire compulsorily, it necessary, land through which it proposed to build a railway. If the Government had taken a 50-mile-strip along the route of the North Island Main Trunk line—-and it could have done so without injustice to the Native owners —it could have loaded the land with the cost of reading and subdivision, and by selling the land after the railway was constructed it could have defrayed the whole cost and had the railway for nothing. He looked upon this as simply a business proposition, and could see no reason why the scheme should not be adopted. Mr Hunt was loudly applauded, and was accorded a special vote of thanks for his address.