COSTLY BLUNDERING

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Volume 58, Issue 142, 18 July 1929, Page 4

COSTLY BLUNDERING

Sorne member of the House can do service to tho country by obtaining a xeport showing the capital cost of the Mangahao adventure up to the 31st of March last. We say nothing about working costs nor about dcprcciation — now standing at approximately £36,000 — the really impoi'tant point being to know the capital cost of this scheme to tho country. It must be in the neighbourhood of a total exceeding £3,000,000, for on the 31st of March, 1927, it stood at nearly two and a quarter millions, the exact figure according to the Year Book being £2,242,871. For this expenditure what did the country obtain? Not an average supply of 10,000 horse power. At tho time the "Beform" Governmenfc decided to shunt Waikaremoana until after Mangahao and Arapuni had been exploited it claimed that there might result from Mangahao 24,000 horsepower in wct seasons, and possibly '18,000 in drv seasons. The actual position, after an expenditure on capital cost totalling to-day over £3,000,000, is that the average supply has not been 16,000 horse powor. For less than that sum Waikaremoana might have been exploited to produce 136,000 horse power, sufficient to electricise the whole of the North Island. Arapuni has not such a disastrous balance sheet as Mangahao, but as compared with what might have been saved had not "Beform" determined to ignore the full exploifcation of Waikaremoana the result is far from assuring. To speak by the card it has to be admitted that we can only guess at the nature of the Arapuni balance sheet," for, curiously enough, the Year Book for 1928 does not contain a single reference to the cost of Arapuni, although the estimated cost for producing 96,000 horse power at Arapuni is given as £1,078,700. It is known that this

cost has been far exceeded already. A big contract was let. Later the contractors, claiming that the Government had been at fault in the compilation of the specifications, threw up their undertaking and claimed compensation. A lawsuit seemed threatened, but the Government, rather than risk this, conceded all the contractors claimed. The reasonable assumption is that the contractors were right, and that the Government did not dare to let the dispute go for settlement to the law courts. The expensive Mangahao fiasco { and the difficulties connected with Arapuni at last convinced "Beform" that it had been wrong in ignoring Waikaremoana, and compelled it to ccmmence work there. The result so far, what has been done and what it has cost to do it. has proved conelusively that what was from the first dinned into the ears of "Beform" was sound and true, namely, that Waikeramoana was not only the easiest electrical proposition in New Zealand — if not in the world — but the eheapest. What has been done at Waikaremoana, since "Beform" had to abandon its attitude of hostility to that project, proves that from two to three millions might have been saved if it had been decided to exploit Waikaremoana up to its 136,000 horse power limit. It has been explained, in a sort of apology for the Governmenfc which made these blunders, that difficulties unforeseen by the Public Works Lepartment arose in connecfcion with Mangahao. This is true, but it does not take us far if we wish to find excuses for the Government. At the time it made its decision, and/when apparentlv believing that the generating stations at Mangahao could be constructed for £438,654, its engineers told the Government that even at this estimate it would cost £18.30 oer horse power at klangahao as against £9 if Waikaremoana were fully exploited, and £13.16 if exploited only up to 40,000 horse power.

The scheme under which all the works named were dealt with provided for supplying 160,000 horse power to tlie North Island and 110,000 horse power to the South Island,. ©ne-fiffch horse power per head of the population — and it was estimated that when completed it would save £he consumption of a million tons of coal annuallv. The South Island has sustained no losses in connection with what has been done there, and as in both I islands the work has been done under estimates supplied by the Public Works Department, it would be interesting to know why so mucb loss has been sustained in the North Island. If we consider estimates alope we gefc no satisfactory answer to this, but if contented with faets as they have developed Ihe l'oason lies on the surface. It is found in the blundering dqtermination of "Beform" to ignore the cheap and ensv Waikaremoana scheme and to spend millions on .Mangahao and Ai-apuni.