LABOUR'S CIVIC ADMINISTRATION

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21356, 26 December 1934, Page 7

LABOUR'S CIVIC ADMINISTRATION

TO THE EDITOR 0T THE r»I*SS. Sir, —The address of Mr D. G. Sullivan in defence of his party s management, or rather mismanagement, of municipal affairs, concealed a great deal more than it revealed. An <ifficer of the City Council supplied his Worship with figures all calculated to prove how efficient Labour management had been. An oracle had spoken, and all who had dared to criticise Labour should feel how insignificant they were. That is how it was intended to work. But it did not. I do not feel in any way impressed by the words of the oracle. Who is he? Mr Sullivan objects to anonymous writers: why docs he quoit.' an anonymous report? That officer may be in a responsible position or he may be a junior clerk. He is evidently a partisan. It was unfair to cast a stigma on all City Council officers because one of them prepared a ridiculous report. Christchurch is rated on the unimproved value for municipal purposes; other towns are mostly rated on capital values. It would be easy to state how unimproved values compared with capital values, but it would not be easy to show how the working man was affected. In Christ- ! church a larger proportion of the rates are paid by the workers than in other towns. Improvements here are not rated, so that rich men with £2OOO houses pay no more than labourers who are trying to buy £4OO houses. Christchurch is flat; street forming and maintaining cost less than in othci towns; consequently rates should oe lower here. But they are not. In arriving at a just estimate, one must lake into consideration the services rendered. In most other towns the drainage and sewerage, the maintenance of the public gardens, and the management of the trams are all part of the City Council's work. Here we have separate boards, with separate rating power. If the £40,000 tram rate and the rates levied by the Drainage Board and the Domains Board are added to the City Council's rates, we are heavier rated than most other towns. That is not the worst of the wretched affair. A larger sum was borrowed for street improvement. Tne City Council under Labour supplied itself with broken metal from the municipal quarries. It overcharged | itcclf for that metal, and so created a reserve in the quarries fund. It. then used that reserve to pay foj wo. k that should have been paid for out

of rates. It makes no difference to the final cost of running the affairs of the city whether the money is taken from the people by rates or taken out of lean money. The Labour party seriously overcharged fur electricity and createcj reserves in the Electricity Department which were raided to help pay the cost of running the city affairs. There are tricks in all trades, but the trade of the demagogue is all tricks. Mr Sullivan talked about the honest Labour councillors who gave their time for nothing, being abused. They have never been abused; their actions have been criticised and they needed it. They are not giving their time to the welfare of the city. They are partisans and are managing the affairs of the city in the interests of their party, and not in the interests of the people. Mr Sullivan says he knows one of the critics, a man who used to ask a lot of questions, and who with the help of a university professor he once p-'uved wrong. Dear me! And because he was once wrong, he can never be right according to Mr Sullivan. Since when did the Labour party listen to university professqrs? How often have they been told by professors of political economy that if the policy of the Labour party is brought into force it will be ruinous to the workers. They do not have a word to say in front of the professors. But when they get away from them they let themselves go. They call them the well fed and well paid professors of economics. It is doubtful if any of them are as well paid as the Labour leaders of Christchurch. V/e need men 011 the council who will ask questions. There are too many of the "Me too." sort. Mr Sullivan accuses one critic of circularising the city. How terrible! But I suppose he is doing it at his own expense. It will not be long before the Labour party members will be doing a great deal more in the way of circularising the city than any individual can do and they will not be doing it at their own expense. As regards the Municipal Electricity Department, when it was first started money was borrowed to reticulate the whole of the city. There were not many users of electricity to start with, and the cost for interest, sinking funds, and depreciation was fairly heavy over the small number of consumers. Now almost every house in every street is joined uu with the Municipal Electricity Department, and the overhead cost a unit is a very small thing. Apart from that there was a considerable reduction in the price the Municipal Electricity Department paid for current. The poorer workers do not share in that. The Labour council gets its current for a little more than three units for a penny, and charges the poor fourpence a unit, an increase of more than 1200 per cent., even the charge of Jd a unit to those who can afford a lot of gadgets to use it works out at more than 300 per cent, increase. They were shamed into making the slight reductions they did make. Mr Sullivan says his party would not reduce wages, but his party did reduce wages. It reduced the wages of union secretaries to tit in with the increased purchasing power of money. In those cases Ihe party had to find the money itself. It should have been just as careful of the spending of other people's money as it was of its own. It seriously reduced the wages of workers whose incomes had already been seriously reduced, to give the council employees a 38 per cent, higher purchasing power than they had before the slump. It was done by a natch cry at the people's expense.— Yours, etc., RESIDENT. December 24, 1034.