TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 14th OCTOBER, 1936. THE YELLOW PERILS.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3821, 14 October 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 14th OCTOBER, 1936. THE YELLOW PERILS.

RAGWORT and gorse again present a seasonal menace—seasonal, that is, in public appreciation of danger which is realised only when it is apparent. The Government has set aside a sum of £41,000 for the purposes of eradication, and already city opinion is alarmed. In a Wellington paper last week the question was raised whether public expenditure is intended for pri-vately-owned and occupied lands, and, if it is, why the State should now be doing what property-owners should have done in the first place before the weeds established themselves. “ There are regulations in existence,” say these city critics, “ for controlling the spread of noxious weeds, but the authorities seem powerless to enforce them, and so it happens that the problem has bolted, and nothing now apparently* remains but action on a gigantic scale at the expense of the general taxpayer.” The submission may be sound theory, but it is not practical politics. It displays a lack of knowledge of the causes, and indicates blindness to consequences of State indifference. Weed pests are not necessarily the product of neglect in the occupied areas, but in the main are an invasion from areas which for various reasons are not occupied. In many cases it would be found that the idle lands which become a nursery for weed growths to establish themselves in are not ready for settlement, and cannot, under existing conditions, be economically settled. But the weed pest has no respect for boundary lines which separate occupied and idle lands. Can, and should, the private property-

owner combat the invasion which threatens him ? It could be as logically argued that the city resident should himself pay the cost of his own community health, and that the general taxpayer should be relieved of the costs of quarantine which guard against the risk of epidemic disease. The cause of State action is precisely the same. If epidemic enters, and the community is rendered idle by disease, economic stagnation follows, trade is checked, and spending power is destroyed. That is the strictly money consequence of neglect, and so, to protect industrial and economic activity, the State spends money in guarding against the danger. So also with noxious weeds. If the productive lands are rendered barren through the invasion of destructive growth—and there is yet no known method of quarantine to guard against infection —then production is impoverished, trade stagnation follows, and the community is rendered poor. Good health for the citizen and the land he occupies is a responsibility which no Government can overlook, and it is shortsighted folly for any city taxpayer to begrudge activity which is at present contemplated in a vote of £41,000 to wage war on a menace which threatens the economic health of New Zealand. The Government makes no mistake when it prepares in readiness for a comprehensive weed eradication. Even if it does not touch the occupied lands it has work a-plenty to do; but in numerous cases it can help occupiers to combat an invasion from what is foreign and dangerous territory.