LOSS ON RAILWAY

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19336, 28 May 1937, Page 4

LOSS ON RAILWAY

MAY BE FOR YEARS MR, SEMPLE’S OPINION ‘SOMETHING FROM WRECK’ (Herald Special Reporter) TE PUIA, this day. “The Gisborne railway may not pay in a year or two; it may not pay for many years, but we had to save something out of the wreck.” The Minister of Public Works, the Hon. R. Semple, made this statement when addressing a gathering in the lounge of Te Puia Hotel last night when reviewing the public works policy of resuming the work on uncompleted railways.

He said that £3,500,000 already had been spent on the railway when it was stopped, and £1,500,000 was required to complete the work, and it would not have, been long before the original £3,500,000 had been paid out in interest. The Government at one time, he said, had eight railways in progress, and after £8,000,000 was spent, all were stopped. On them £7*000,000 had been paid in interest up to March 31 last. Three of those railways, had been restarted, but some, of them would never he started again because they had not been economically planned.

No country with a population like ours could afford to commit blunders like that. After all, it was a business, a mighty big business, and no business man would spend his money until he knew it was safe to spend it.