DEVELOPING TARANAKI

Wanganui Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 160739, 27 August 1920, Page 3

DEVELOPING TARANAKI

GOVERNMENT’S POSITION. A QUESTION OF MEN AND MONEY. (Per United Press Association.) WELLINGTON, August 26. Replying to a deputation from the Taranaki Progressive League, which asked that various works in Taranaki should be proceeded with, Mr Massey said, referring to the attitude of Australia regarding coal, that -if supplies had not been forthcoming the New Zealand Government had arranged to cut down the railway service from Monday next. He made a sympathetic reply to the deputation, but said that the whole thing came back to money and men. He could not meet all the demands mad© on him, and he believed he was not far out in stating that he had been asked by local bodies and others to proyide a hundred millions sterling. If the Government was able to provide twenty-five millions, ten of which were to repay the loan falling due at the end of the year, it would be doing quite well, and it hoped to he able to do that. He did not wish to see development retarded, but at the back of his mind ail the time was the thought that neither the Government nor the local bodies were getting full value for the money expended. In the expenditure of money and in the carrying out of works Taranaki would get its full share.