Local Bodies Condemn Auckland Airport Plan

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28748, 20 November 1958, Page 16

Local Bodies Condemn Auckland Airport Plan

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, November 19. Thirteen local authorities and a private person made submissions against the Auckland Harbour Board (Airport) Empowering Bill before the Local Bills Committee of the House of Representatives on the second day of its sitting in Auckland today. Four authorities stated outright that the Government should take full responsibility for financing the construction of the proposed airport at Mangere. Two suggested a two-thirds Government to one-third local payment system, while another wanted any local debts to be paid from a per capita basis instead of by a levy on ratepayers. The Otahuhu Borough Council suggested the airport be built in Christchurch. All, however, were against the provisions of the fourth clause of the bill which gives the board wide rating powers over the Auckland province.

Some stated that the board was not the right body to administer the airport, others agreed it was the best under the circumstances and expressed their support in building an airport—without being rated. The Tauranga Borough Council and the Tauranga County Council, in a combined statement, harshly criticised the Auckland Harbour Board for previous trading opposition and declared:

“We want no truck with this board. It would accept for its own parochial coffers all profits of the project, rating the province for any losses as another ad hoc rate on the scats of production that give metropolitan Auckland its very being.” The chairman of the Auckland Harbour Board (Captain A. W. Jenkyns) has previously stated that the board has, in fact, no intention of rating outside its own harbour district which does not in any case include the Bay of Plenty. Dr. W. M. Smith, an individual submission, denounced the observations of an American airport consultant, Mr Lei fc .i Fisher, as being largely of “a partisan, emotive and propagandist nature.” He said Mr Fisher’s “enthusiastic prognostications are in the nature of sales talk, rather than sober objective evaluation.” Dr. Smith questioned the need for an international airport at all, suggesting Whenuapai would suffice. Government and Opposition members of the committee appeared to be united in their abhorrence of the idea that the Government should pay more than the agreed 50 per cent, of the cost of constructing the airport.