CATCHMENT AREA CLASSIFICATION

Press, Volume XCII, Issue 27794, 20 October 1955, Page 9

CATCHMENT AREA CLASSIFICATION

CRITICISM BY MAGISTRATE MANAWATU CHAIRMAN REPLIES (New Zealand Press Association) PALMERSTON NORTH. Oct. 18. The Manawatu Catchment Board today answered the strictures passed by Mr R. M. Grant, S.M., in his recent judgment on its classification for the lower Manawatu scheme by denying that it had at any stage attempted to interfere with the Court. In a statement which was adopted by the board, the chairman (Mr J. D. Aitchison) said: “The Court has devoted a paragraph of its judgment to record its strongest disapproval of improper attempts in certain quarters to interfere with its constitution. Tba board most emphatically states that it did not in any way attempt to interfere . with the constitution of the Court.” The statement recorded the board’s protest at the terms in which portions of the judgment were couched. “I think,” said Mr Aitchison, “that one could search the law reports of this country from the date of its colonisation without finding a parallel to the terms used in this particular judgment.”

Particular exception was taken to sections of the judgment which described the evidence of the board’s engineer (Mr P. G. Evans) as having contained “specious evasions,” and Which suggested that the board had been audacious and arrogant in presuming itself to be “above the law.” It was regrettable, said Mr Aitchison, that an officer of Mr Evans’s qualifications and standing as an engineer now appeared to be-placed in a position where he was unable to join issue with the Court on the question of the use of the words applied to him. . Of the Magistrate’s comment on the r board, Mr Aitchison said the board was comprised in the main of experienced men with long periods of local body service. They realised only too well that their powers were limited by the statute which created the board. The board carried a resolution that “in respect of Mr Grant’s judgment on the lower Manawatu classification, it be left to the board’s chairman and legal advisers to take such action as shall best advance the scheme.”