RADIO STATION AT AUCKLAND

Press, Volume LXXV, Issue 22876, 24 November 1939, Page 8

RADIO STATION AT AUCKLAND

COST OF PROPOSED BUILDING PROJECT CRITICISED BY MR HAMILTON “UNWARRANTED EXTRAVAGANCE” [THE PRESS Special service.! WELLINGTON, November 23. Remarking that he was not satisfied that every endeavour had been made to find alternative premises in Auckland, the Leader of the Opposition (the Hon. Adam Hamilton) im a statement to-day declared that the necessity for approving £70,000 for a new radio station for IZB was still very fair from clear. “There are some very interesting developments since 1 first made iny criticism,” said Mr Hamilton. “AH those who chose to attack me for my protest carefully avoided reference to the two main points 1 raised, and I feel it my duty to' repeat them. The official newspaper of the Government itself chose carefully to omit them from its republication of my remarks. thus providing an example of a perverted press-that it would be difficult to match. The two points were:— “(1) Why a new radio station for £70,000 was approved, while I myself am handling cases for people who place their children in orphanages because they cannot get houses in which to live with them? “(2) Why £70,000 worth of new radio station was approved and announced when the country • has just entered a war, and Parliament has just closed, with a promise reluctantly extracted from the Government that public expenditure will be reviewed, in order to make the war burden for all sections of the community fall as lightly as possible. “I am not satisfied that every endeavour was made to find alternative premises in Auckland that would have served the station in the meantime. This is another example of the pretentiousness with which the Director of Commercial Broadcasting wishes to surround himself, and no one can deny that, directly or indirectly, the money for this unnecessary ostentation comes out of the pockets of the consumers. Even trips abroad at the public expense, and .civil servant salaries of £ISOO a year come out of the incomes —often much smaller incomes—of the taxpayers and consuming public generally. Therefore the people in authority are in honour bound to retain a sense of proportion. A child can understand that it is possible to remedy inferior acommpdation without rushing into £70,000 worth of building on a £IO,OOO site. “I would recall a third statement I made, too. I said that this had been approved while already rusty steel skeletons in our cities tell of extravagance and disorganisation that allow uncompleted public buildings to mock