GREEDY PROVINCIALISTS.

Manawatu Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 423, 10 July 1905, Page 2

GREEDY PROVINCIALISTS.

Thb Auckland newspapers and the Auckland members of Parliament are hopelessly provincial in their aims and asperations. Scarcely a week passes without a yell being raised in the Auckland press—the Herald particularly—about the cruel way in which the northern districts are being treated by the J Government, and every now and again a lot of Aucklanders get together and rend the welkin with their excited declamations about the uniquitous omission of Cabinet to put a vote on the Estimates for a road to the distant hamlet of Kauri Gum. If an Auckland member begins to feel shaky on his political pins, and to imagine tbat he is not so popular as formerly, he usually contrives to get up a spirited controversy with a Minister or head of a department, with the object of showing that he can't eat or sleep for thinking of Auckland and its wants, and the nameless horrors of the roadless north, A day or two ago an exoited | individual called Allison called the Auckland representatives together— as a pre-electioneering precaution no doubt—to discuss the customary topic, and, after a bit of a korero, they decided to rope in Minister McGowan and present him with an ultimatum to the effect that if Auckland didn't get its share of the loaves and fishes, the northern representatives were prepared to jettison whatever political principles they happened to have left;—and the Government would have to go! But unluckily for these marauders, they hit up against a gunboat. Mr McGowan spoke out: I am always willing, he said, to assist the North, but whilst I hold my present position it is my duty to look after the interests of the whole colony. To tie myself up with any particular section ol representatives would be to show that I was not fit for my position. If lam not capable of forming my own opinion I will not allow any man, or body of men to form an opinion for me. And he left. Thereupon after a bit of wrangling amongst themselves, these mutineers decided to "subordinate party interests where necessary to secure justice to all parts of Auckland province." So there is now a fifth party in tbe House—the Auckland League of Grab-Alls and Political Body Snatchers. And this is the state to which politics have been reduced in this colony.