Auckland in the red – $25M wanted

Press, 22 September 1976, Page 10

Auckland in the red - $25M wanted

PA Auckland The growth of Auckland will stop if the Government and the public do not inject millions of dollars into the Auckland Regional Authority this year.

The authority’s financial crisi has taken another turn for the worse, with the news that the National Provident Fund will have only S6M to lend it this financial year.

The deputy-chairman of the authority (Mr L. I. Murdoch) said this S6M was the estimate given to him last week in talks with fund officers. As an alternative, the fund had offered to underwrite the Stage A extensions to the Mangere sewage treatment plant for the next three years. But if this was done, no other loan money for capital works would be available.

The S6M offered included money for redemption loans. The amount was clearly inadequate, and early discussions would have to be had with the Minister of Finance

(Mr Muldoon), said Mr Murdoch. The authority needs S2SM in loan funds this year for essential work for which contracts have already been let. It has approval to raise the loans, but so far has obtained only $3.5M, from all sources.

The money is needed mostly for drainage and sewage work. Ideally, the A.R.A. would like a further SI6M for work approved subject to finance and for new works. Mr Murdoch said that about S9M to SI.OM would also be needed next year for committed works.

He predicted that the authority’s bank overdraft at the end of the financial year would amount to about SIOM. By law it should be reduced to almost nothing. The Mayor of Auckland (Sir Dove-Myer Robinson) said the crisis was not of authority making. “The Government has put us into this position,” he said.

“It is up to them to get us out of this mess.”

Mr E. A. J. Holdaway said he did not think members of the Government realised the work the authority did. The region supported 27 per cent

of New Zealand’s population, and had a 50 per cent higher growth rate than anywhere else. On that basis it. needed 40 per cent of the nation’s expenditure on capital growth.

The chairman of the A.R.A. works committee (Mr A. T. Bell) was also critical of the Government. He said that Auckland M.P.s did nothing for Auckland.

“They are happy to get elected, and sit down there doing nothing.” After hearing a report from the authority’s solicitor, that members could be liable to a fine and surcharge if the overdraft was above the legal limit, the authority decided that it would express its deep concern to the Government, and ask for urgent consideration of its predicament.

Colonel G. A. Hitchings, who has been appointed to command the Army’s biggest training base at Waiouru. He will succeed Colonel R. R. Harding who is moving to Army Headquarters, Wellington. Colonel Hitchings has just returned to New Zealand from Washington where he was the deputy head of the defence staff at the New Zealand Embassy. In 1968 he served as battery commander of 161 Battery in South Vietnam.