ACCESS TO SEA

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21809, 15 June 1936, Page 10

ACCESS TO SEA

LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER REPLY BY PRESIDENT OF PORT CHRISTCHURCH LEAGUE Strong exception is taken by Mr J. Longton, president of the Port Christchurch League, to the letter which has been forwarded to the Prime Minister, the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage, by the Mayor of Christchurch, Mr J. W. Beanland, and others. Mr Longton has sent to the Prime Minister a reply to the letter. “The Christchurch City Council has never considered the question of a tunnel road, nor has the Heathcote County Council decided against a referendum,” the letter stated, “and only two'business associations have done so. One of the two borI oughs referred to is, as might be j expected, Lyttelton. The Ashburton County is against a referendum, but is also against a tunnel road. There are six boroughs, 19, county councils, and two town districts which have not declared for a tunnel road or against a referendum, so that even if the signatures to the letter had represented the bodies they purported to do they would still be a small part of the district concerned. The statement that the tunnel road advocates, as mentioned in the letter, after full consideration of the two proposals have unanimously decided in favour of a tunnel road, is absolutely contrary to fact.” The Prime Minister would observe that of the first three names on the petition for a referendum presented by Mr T. H. McCombs two were those of Messrs E. H. Andrews (Deputy-Mayor), and W. S. MacGibbon (city councillor), the letter continued. The latter had apparently signed the letter against a referendum for the Citizens’ Association and the petition for the referendum as 3; citizen. The Christchurch City Council was not unanimous for a tunnel road, and Mr Beanland had no authority to say so as Mayor of Christchurch. Other signatures to the letter were in the same category, it was said. There was not now a Port and City Committee as an advocate of the tunnel road, said the letter, but a few of the old committee had secured representation on certain bodies and were using their official positions to forward their private opinions without the sanctions of the local bodies concerned. Had the' persons signing the letter been genuinely desirous of an immediate decision on the two schemes they would have assisted the Port Christchurch League, as they had .been asked to do, through Mr F. W. Freeman, with the original Referendum Bill as suggested by the Hon. R. Semple.