Museums and Other Works

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27094, 18 July 1953, Page 6

Museums and Other Works

The Canterbury Museum Trust Board is justifiably puzzled by a government policy which allows in Auckland museum extensions estimated to cost £440,000 and forbids in Christchurch museum extensions estimated at £120,000. It is the more puzzled because while the amount of Government money involved in the Auckland project may be as much as £ 162,500, in the Canterbury project it will be less than £35,000; because the Auckland scheme has been specially favoured by a three-fold raising of the ceiling on government subsidies for war memorials and a two-year extension of the time-limit for the raising of subsidised funds; and because Auckland is adding substantially to a fine modern building while Christchurch is setting out to rehabilitate an old and inadequate one. The discrimination cannot be explained by one project being a war memorial and the other a provincial centenary memorial. A museum is a museum,

however it is called. It is also a capital work, making the same demands on finance, materials and labour wherever it is situated and whether the funds are raised locally or come from the central government. The Minister of Works (Mr Goosman) has just issued in Auckland a list of government projects under construction in the Auckland area, works “ approved in principle ”, and works given “ preliminary con- “ sideration ”. The cost of works in hand is estimated at more than £7,000,000; works approved in principle run to another £2,350,000 without any allowance for the Auckland underground railway and suburban railway electrification, for which estimates have not been taken out but are certain to cost many millions. Auckland also has a long and heavy list of “ local ” works, headed by a sewerage and drainage scheme which will eventually cost £8,000,000 or more. And the first reaction to Mr Goosman’s announcement was the sour comment by the Auckland morning newspaper that the works are no more than Auckland’s minimum needs and rather less than its due when judged by Wellington standards. The Government will get no respite from these ceaseless demands until it compiles and makes public a list of works priorities on a national rather than a district basis. As things are, Government favour seems to go to those who shout their demands the loudest.