Lyttelton tunnel control may go to Harbour Board

Press, 18 July 1978, Page 1

Lyttelton tunnel control may go to Harbour Board

The Lyttelton Harbour Board may be the body which takes over responsibility for running the Lyttelton road tunnel.

While the other local authorities are still trying to reach a common proposal the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) is expected to inform the harbour board that, if it wants to free the tunnel of tolls, he would be happy for it to take over the tunnel’s administration.

The member of Parliament for Lyttelton (Miss Colleen Dew’e) said yesterday that the Prime Minister's patience vras running out.

“Like a lot of Irishmen he hasn’t got all the pat’ence in the W’orld, and something has to be done about this tunnel immediately if we are going to get rid of the tolls,” she said. Her concern about the delays had prompted the telegrams she sent last week to the chairman and mayors of Christchurch,

Lyttelton and Heathcote councils and to the Lyttelton Harbour Board. Miss Dewe asked the local authorities whether they w’ere prepared to take over responsibility for administering the tunnel. Yeste-day she had heard from only the Heathcote council. “’ have been worried over the delays since we received an assurance from Mr Muldoon some time ago, and I tried to prompt action by the telegrams,” Miss Dewe said.

“We are fast reaching the point where the Prime Minister is going to say to local authorities that, if they cannot reconcile their differences, he will withdraw his consideration over the tolls.” Miss Dewe denied that the National Roads Board last week had affirmed that it would not take over the tunnel. She said the report was misleading. “The

board said it would not take over the administration, but it certainly did not say that it would not take over anything else to do with the tunnel,” she said.

Miss Dewe said that if the administration were left to the existing authority, it would have to find the present tunnel costs of more than $500,000 a year but with no revenue source apart from tolls.

“If local authorities concerned could have got together and agreed to pick up the tab for the tunnel, it might add 50c to every $lOO of rates,” Miss Dewe said.

Her personal opinion now was that the Lyttelton Harbour Board would be the logical authority to take over the tunnel because of its concern for the port and the use of the tunnel for freight.

“The habour board would be in a position to recover some of the charges, and the tunnel operation is very much part of the port operation,” said Miss Dewe. She declined to comment on whether she had discussed any proposals with the harbour board but described the possibility of a prospect as “a ray of light at last.”

The constitution of the board also made it the desirable authority to take over the tunnel because the members covered provincial areas as well at the city of Christchurch. "However, I have a very open mind on how the whole thing could be worked. I feel that, from a commercial point of view as well, the harbour board would be the logical authority,” Miss Dewe said. She was almost certain.

she said, that such a proposal would receive approval from the Prime Minister as a way of cleaning up what he described as an “untidy situation.” Miss Dewe also agreed that Mr Muldoon’s approval would quickly dispel claims that the move to abolish tolls was a political ploy because of Lyttelton’s being a marginal electorate. She said she had also heard views that the Government was aware that if Canterbury local authorities could not agree it would let Mr Muldoon off the hook by being able to say that he, and Miss Dewe, had tried. “Yea, I have heard these things and they are absolute rubbish; I have been at the tunnel authority ever since they last put the toll charges up and I heard that the tolls could be doubled by 1980 to meet the tunnel commitments,” she said. Replying to a suggestion that the present plight of the tunnel authority was subscribed to by Mr Muldoon in 1967 when he. as Minister of Finance, refused to allow a toll increase, Miss Dewe said: “And so did Mr Tizard (Labour Minister of Finance) in 1972 and 1975. So there is no argument there.”

Differences between political groups on the Lyttelton Harbour Board cannot be discounted if this week’s meeting of the port development committee makes a recommendation to the next board meeting. Some Labour Party members on the board are known to hold strongly that the board is in business to run the port; there is another view among other Labour members that the board, not the Christchurch City Council, should run the tunnel.