Compare with this flapdoodle about 1500 miles of railway the actual facts Taking the last ten years there have been constructed in New Zealand 3124 miles of railway of which the North Island have had made an average of 11’70 miles per year, and the South Island 13-20 miles. Now if, instead of vaguely talking of impossibilities some indefinite scheme had been sketched out, the Ministry would not have laid themselves out for the well merited jeering they will come in for. If the Government honestly desired to carry on public works in a manner that had some glimmering of a policy about it, Parliament would unani mously support a scheme with some finality about it, but the methods of the past few years in adding a mile or two here'and the same somewhere else is not a policy. In discussing the matter with an ex-memher to-day he sketched out a proposal which would hardly be objected to by anyone. Taking the average of the past 10 years at 81 miles 20 chains of con struction as the record of the past, he proposes that 200 miles should be constructed during the next five years —that is 40 miles per annum. The South Island has been more liberally treated than the North in the past, and the following distribution would deal with the lines most required and most likely, to give returns :—North Island—From Napier towards Gis borne, 30 miles ; Main Trunk Rail

wav, 00 miles ; deviations Paimers ton-Haweva, 10 miles; Helensville North, 20 miles; total, 120 miles; South Island —Orapuki, 8 miles ; Sea ward Bush, 4 miles; Otago Central, 30 miles ; Blenheim towards Awatere, 10 miles ; Midland Railway, 36 miles ; total, 80 miles. This makes 200 miles for the colony. The Midland is open to objection until the relative positions of the Company and the Government are settled ; but that is a matter easily adjusted by transferring that length to other lines about which there is no dispute. The average cost of these lines with equipments will be within £7500 per mile, which would mean millions spread ovei a period of five years. We are spending borrowed money at a faster rate than that on our railways at present without achiev ing much in the way of completion. 