PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume VI, Issue 836, 16 July 1879, Page 2

PUBLIC WORKS POLICY.

The JVeio Zealand Herald devotes a leader to the discussion of the mode in which the Public Works policy of the Ministry is administered, and the allocation of the loan expenditure. Our contemporary says : — "The Minister for Public Works has accepted a series of tenders for railway and. other contracts in the South to the extent of nearly a third of a million sterling. Of these contracts £22,910 are in Canterbury, £9,921 in Nelson, while in Otago the Minister of Public J Works has just pledged the Governinet to an expenditure of no less than £134,765 for railway purposes. In addition it is proposed to spend £27,000 shortly at Wellington on Post-office, Telegraph, and Custom* house offices, and the West Coast railway is to be proceeded with from Xaiwarra, and carried on in conjunction with a reclamation site at Wellington. As far as Auckland is concerned, her claims have ' received scant attention and scantier fulfilment. The Kaipara and Waikato lines are still unfinished, the Auckland harbour railway reclamation works are dragging their slow length along ; the Thames railway is being pottered at adjacent to Grahams-' town, but the centre and Hamilton sections remain untouched ; the Whangarei people have petitioned that their three-mile railway may be lengthened to six, and a flying survey is about to be made for railway purposes between Kawakawa and Whangarei, which will probably end with an equally flying report. This is about the sum and substance of what is being done here at present by the Government in the matter of public works."