Attitude Of Director Of Forests Criticised

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29206, 17 May 1960, Page 14

Attitude Of Director Of Forests Criticised

He believed the Director of Forests (Mr A. R. Entrican) had gone as a hostile witness to the hearing of the application to establish a pulp and paper mill in Canterbury, said Mr W. H. Gillespie, member of Parliament for Hurunui, speaking at the meeting. "I have taken a very dim view that a head of a department can go to a hearing and take the attitude which he did.” Mr Gillespie said.

Mr Gillespie was loudly applauded when he said: “I will do everything in my power to help this project along in any way I can.”

Mr Gillespie spoke after he had asked Sir David Henry, chairman and managing director of New Zealand Forest Products, Ltd., whether a letter he had written had been sent to the Minister of Forests or the Director of Forests. Sir David Henry replied that it had been sent to Mr A. R. Entrican, as head of the Forestry Department—* ‘being an executive matter, I felt that was the proper way to approach it.” he said.

“From the knowledge I have of Government requirements, I would have felt myselfalthough I am not questioning your decision to do it that way—that the right place to have directed such a question was, in the first place to the Minister of Forests; because I have taken a very dim view that a head of a department can go to a hearing and take the attitude which Mr Entrican did,” Mr Gillespie said. * I ? now J m i«ht be taken to task for what I might say, but I would have no objections whatsoever to the head of a Government department—in this case a very important department, the Forestry Department—going before a committee if he was asked to go to it and give the information which was required to be given at the hearing,’’ he said.

“But from what my reading told me—l was not there, and it is only what I surmise—l would say the Director of Forests went there as a hostile witness to the application which was being made and which might benefit the people of Canterbury. "When I learn that the information was sought from the Director of Forests and not the Minister of Forests. I must absolve the Government from any criticism I might have levelled, had other action been taken,” Mr Gillespie said. His own private opinion was that the Forest Service in North Canterbury would, in the not-so-far-distant future, be desperately in need of getting rid of its timber—“if they are not that already,” Mr Gillespie said. Mr Gillespie said he had information, though he could not disclose its source, that the Forest Service "would not know what to do” with its timber in the not-far-distant future.

Sir David Henry, in reply, said he owed it to the Minister of Forests (Mr Tirikatene), with whom he had been in touch soon after he wrote to Mr Entrican, to say that Mr Tirikatene had given his “general blessing,” and had said he would help Forest Products to secure the timber if the company finally required it. “I think I owe that to the Minister of Forests," Sir David Henry said. “If that was said, I am surprised that the Director of Forests has been able to continue with the sort of statements he has been making,” Mr Gillespie said. (Manufacturers* Discussion on Page 17.)