I.—lo.

10

[P. G. DALZIiCLL.

80. The Chairman.] I understood you to say thut you hud approached the Natives with the object of getting them to sell their land? —No; I have only discussed the matter with one or two of the principal Natives. 81. In clause 7 of your petition you say, " That your petitioners are aware that the Native owners recognize the facts stated in paragraph 6 of the petition, and would be prepared to sell to the Taupo Totara Timber Company a reasonable proportion of the total area at the present value, thus enabling the company to secure an additional asset upon which money could be raised for the construction of the railway "1 —Yes, that is what the chief people told us. 82. What authority have you for that? —There is a man named Heuheu, who is the principal Native chief. 83. Then, as a matter of fact, the clause in the petition is not quite correct?— Yes, it is quite correct. Although we could not enter into a contract with all of them, we could take the opinion of the chief people. 84. Have you placed any value on this Native land, and at what price per acre? —The highest price paid by the Government in that district is 4s. 6d. per acre. 85. Do you estimate that you will be able to purchase at that price?—No, I do not think so. Some me asking £10 an acre.

Thursday, 28th September, 1911. James Robert Raw, of Rotorua, examined. (No. 2.) 1. The Chairman.] I understand you wish to give evidence? —Yes. 2. What is your full name?— James Robert Raw. 3. And you reside at? —Rotorua. 4. You will probably prefer to make a statement in your own way! —Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, —As a representative of the Rotorua Chamber of Commerce, we are emphatically of the opinion that the request of the Taupo Totara limber Company for an extension of their charter and power to construct a further sixteen miles of railway, and the granting of power to acquire 200,000 acres of Native lands, is opposed to the best and vital interests of the State L and particularly the thermal regions of New Zealand comprised in the areas of the Taupo and Rotorua Counties. The creating of sucli a huge monopoly or trust, which, in addition to its present holding of many square miles of country, proposes to buy or acquire from the Natives without competition a huge slice of some 312 square miles of land, is opposed to settlement as at present understood by the people of New Zealand. It evidently would be the policy of the company to sell to men who had capital enough to purchase outright, and who were able to spend the money necessary to bring the pumice and swamp lands into profitable occupation. This class of settlement is limited, and it would be many years before such settlement would be successfully accomplished. In the event of their scheme not being successful, the company proposes, after a lapse of time — say ten years —to throw up the land and allow it to be sold by the Native Land Board. They would then have only one class of trade left which it would be safe to say had any prospect of being an increasing one. The bushes, on their own estimate, have a prospective profitable life of fifteen years. If at the expiration of ten years their land-settlement scheme is a failure or not a financial success, the tourist trade of the colony is their principal asset. It therefore seems to us, seeing they are candid in their admissions that the reasons for obtaining options over the hotels and sights in the Taupo district are to obtain the increased value of such caused by the extension of their railway to Taupo, and such values are entirely dependent on the tourist traffic, that as a business proposition they will put the whole or a large part of their energies and capital into inducing the ever-increasing body of tourists to travel on their railway, ride in their motorcars, voyage in their steamers across Lake Taupo, and thus on to the proposed railway from the southern end of Lake Taupo to the town of Kakahi, on the Main Trunk line. If it is a fact that they have already an option over the boats at present engaged on the lake, or whether they intend to form a fleet of steamers of their own, private competition will have no chance against a company which can issue through tickets from one end of its system to the other; by this ami various other means it will control the traffic of the lake and fishing-camps, which must rely upon it for supplies and attendance. The best fishing-camps are held by the present Ferry Company on leases from the Natives and others. We believe it has been the practice of the company in the past to supply those who aie in its employ with stores and other necessaries. It carries on the business of general storekeepers, and it is logical to deduct that it will use all those avenues of profit for its own benefit. Private enterprise will then find it unprofitable to oarry on operations, and the field will be left to a strong company of foreign capitalists, who will endeavour by all the monopoly which they are asking to have granted to them to make the highest possible return to their shareholders that it is possible to make. So far as we are concerned, we have no objection to the Taupo Totara Timber Company as a timber company, but the proposal of the company is of such a nature that, if it can sell its railway, with the advantage of large areas of land it proposes to acquire, and the still greater control they will have by owning all the hotels and accommodation and the means of transit by land and water, as well as the actual possession of the active thermal sights of the district, we are no longer dealing with the Taupo Totara Timber Company, but with a body of foreign capitalists with a huge monopoly of land and traffic. It means in effect that this Dominion is making such a combination, at present without any equivalent, of the control of Lake Taupo and of the finest trout-fishing in the world. It will have the control of half the thermal region, with all the spas, springs, and medicinal waters within its borders; the advantage of all its world-wide reputation, its prestige, and the fame of its healing-waters, and the illimitable potentialities of its undoubted future. As an asset it is of incalculable value. This Government has already and is at the present time spending large sums of money in advertising the Thermal