GISBORNE-NAPIER LINE

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18273, 16 December 1933, Page 15

GISBORNE-NAPIER LINE

STOPPAGE OF WORK WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE? (Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The member for Gisborne, Mr D. W. Coleman, and Mr W. A. Veitch, former Minister of Railways, again came to grips in the House of Representatives to day over the responsibility of the stopping of Ihe Gisborne, line. When the Public Works Statement; was under discussion, Mr Veitch, supporting criticisms of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr M. J. Savage, declared that all uncompleted public works should be examined. Works which were essential to be completed from unemployment funds and any further funds found necessary should be borrowed. lie would admit that the Gisborne-Napier line had been stopped by the Government of which he was a Minister, but that was not the final stopping of tin: line. It was merely a suspension caused by lack of funds. The decision to finally abandon the line was contained in the report of the Railways Board. Interest on the Gisborne line as it now stood amounted to about £170,000 per annum, and the physical deterioration must amount to a greater sum. Mr Coleman said that, Mr Veitch had been Minister of Railways in the Cabinet which was responsible for stopping the work on the NapierGisborac line. Had Sir -loscjh Ward lived the line would have been finished, but as soon as lie died the Cabinet, under the leadership of the lit. lion. (!. W. Forties, had stopped the work. When a deputation from Gisborne had waited on the Cabinet there was no one who argued more strongly against going on with the work than Mr Veitch. He had endeavored to justify in every way the stopping of work. It was no use trying to unload the blame on to the Railways Board, for, although the board had recommended that tiie work he not resumed, it had not stopped the work in the first place. Mr Veitch interjected to sav that he had recollected that Mr Coleman was correct. The Forbes Government had ordered the work to stop. Mr Coleman said the work had been stopped despite the fact that officers of the Public Works Department had considered it should go on. lie also recalled that work on the South Island Main Trunk Hue had been carried on for some time .after work had ceased on the Gisborne line.