The Press SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1937. Access to the Sea

Press, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22081, 1 May 1937, Page 14

The Press SATURDAY, MAY 1, 1937. Access to the Sea

Thursday's conference .may be regarded as having entirely fulfilled the Prime Minister's wish to receive a clear indication of local wishes in regard to the choice of a major public work in the Christchurch area. It has been given by the vote of the representatives of 23 out of 28 local authorities and commercial, industrial, and other organisations in favour of the tunnel road to the port. In effect, it was the business of the conference to approve one or other of the proposed solutions of the access to the sea problem, because no other need of comparable urgency and scope could well be named; and it now becomes the Government's business to examine the engineering, financial, and economic aspects of the approved work and to decide accordingly. The Engineer-in-Chief of the Public Works Department, who presided over the conference, made this quite clear: the Government, he said, would not undertake the building of the road without investigating and without proving the economic case for it. Nobody in his senses, of course, has asked for or expected anything else; but anxieties felt in some quarters will be allayed by this plain and authoritative statement. Others, it may be expected, will be allayed by the results of an investigation into the extent to.which changed methods of working the port would be necessitated by the opening of the road; but whether it is found that "the tearing up of Lyttelton "harbour" would be required, or only that it would have to be "remodelled," for greater efficiency and within tolerable limits of cost, there is now no need even to speculate. The point is that these questions ought to be answered by the State's experts, since a national work is projected, and they Will be. Even the attitude of the Lyttelton Harbour Board, which voted against the resolution of approval, is one which confesses the reasonableness of the result of the conference. The chairman of the board said that he was sent to oppose the scheme "if" it meant "tearing up the har- " bour." He was, he said, " not opposing the " tunnel road," but only guarding against possible (but not proven) consequences. It seems to follow that, if the Government satisfies itself, it will satisfy such doubts as still survive in Christchurch. This is a fortunate position to reach, after so many years of contest; and the Prime Minister and the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce deserve thanks for their success in paving the way to it. But in the last stage of all Mr Wood is particularly to be thanked for the skilful chairmanship which held the conference firmly but not rigidly to its task and clearly showed its limits. A conference less capably controlled might have confused itself among irrelevant issues and spoken, in the end, with an uncertain voice.