“NEITHER FAIR NOR CANDID”

Dominion, Volume 15, Issue 234, 29 June 1922, Page 4

“NEITHER FAIR NOR CANDID”

TECHNICAL BOARD’S CRITICISMS ■ MINISTER ISSUES A REPLY EXPLAINS AUCKLAND GRANT p Tho Minister of Education, tho Hon. C. J. Parr, yesterday expressed rur prise at the tone of the ■Wellington Technical College Board’s criticisms of the Government on account of the difficulty in which the board finds itself over the erection of its hew building at Mount Cook. Mr. Parr stated that the' Government had carried out every promise it had made to the boards “The board,” said the Minister, “is neither fair nor pandid. Late last 'year it found itself in difficulties; owing to its unbusiness-like ' methods, 1 inasmuch as it had expended the Government grant of £15,000, and had undertaken commitments amounting to another £7OOO without providing any finance to meet them. The board then came to Mr. Massey and Sir Francis Bell. What was its request? Through the Mayor and other •pokesmen it asked Mr. Massey for' t £15,000, at the rate of £2OOO per month, wherewith to build tho western wing,- so as to give the board.six class-rooms, and thus enable it to vacate the temporary Cuba Street premises. What did the Prime Minister do? Though hard put to it at the timer he agreed to provide the £15,000, it being distinctly understood that this was all the board was going to press for. The newspaper reports show this to have been the Case. The Government has carried out every promise made, and ha's expended nearly £2,7,000 all told upon _ the new oullding besides giving the site free. , “Now the board comes , along and »sks for another £21.000. having ugain gone in for unauthorised domnitments to the extent of over £7OOO. Whether the Treasury can stand, anther £21,000 at the present time .is he question which. I haver got to dismiss with, the Primo Minister..'; r/, - "Auckland the Cinderella.” /•'“I make, these observations with regret-, but the- hostile criticism of the-Government compels the retort. Now Mr. Howell and his board advance their claim bv comparing the -Government expenditure on Auckland ■University College wi,th that on the 'Wellington Technical College. . Such a "oemparison I's obviously unfair. The fair comparison is to ask what the ■ Government has done for. the four -universities. I hfive here figures of university expenditure which, will, perhaps, convince even the Wellington board that- Auckland has been easily the Oindrella of the lot as regards university buildings. As a matter of fact Auckland has no university building, the Auckland University being conducted in the disused, worn but,, high school building, which was abandoned seven years ago .as unfit , for secondary education, ■ while every other centre has got its excellent college actually in being. The figures of tho Government grants for unifversitv buildings for the four centres since 1903 are as follow : Victoria College, £87.000: Canterbury, £23 000; Otago, £98,000; Auckland, £ll,OOO. An Alleged Promise Denied “The so-called promiso of £lOO,OOO for the Auckland .Technical College is quite without foundation ; no such promise has been made. -The promise referred to is evidently that for the Auckland University College: and so far as the new university college at Auckland is concerned, the Government is pledged to give £15.000 only . ’ during the next twelve months, as a start. It ' will take many years to erect the building, which is estimated to cost £130,000, and towards this the Auckland ■ people have agreed to find £30.000. . „ ~ . “Notwithstanding the smallness of the university expenditure at Auckland, the Auckland University has the largest attendance of students in arts and science, law and commerce. I do not include in this comparison, of course, the special schools in medicine and engineering. In tho courses common to all the university colleges those ,nt Auckland number 836, those - at Otago 601, at Canterbury 592, and at 'Wellington 680. The Beard’s Best Friend. “I hope and believe,’Vsaid the Minister in conclusion,, “that I am the best friend that the Wellington Tech-nical-College haa got in forwarding-its claims. I don’t think that My.' Howell and the board would deny this; and I shall still do my beyt for them. .But I da stranfily resent attacks of Ithis description inado upon tho impartiality of the Government in expending public money. Last year similar eriticbni was indulged in with regard io primary and other school buildings, ana I then gave the Press a table which showed that the Government, during my term of office, had made grants totalling £213,000 to the Wellington district, and that no other centre had done better.” BOARD CHAIRMAN’S COMMENT A HISTORY OF THE NEW BUILDING ' Mr. W. H. Bennett, chairman of th» Wellington ifochnical College Board, offers the following comments upon the Minister’s statement: — “I have no intention of i entering on newspaper correspondence with the Minister of Education on the subject of grants for the -new Technical- College, for it gets nowhere. But facts are facts, and a few will not hurt anyone, and may help some. One can scarcely throw his memory back to the time when the necessity for a new Technical College in Wellington was first brought before the -authorities. The whole subject was then shelved year by year owing to the difficulty of finding'a site. Eventually, through tho kind offices of tfie Hon. T. M. Wilford, who'hold the portfolio of Minister of Justice for a short period in the National Government, the present site under his Department was secured, also a personal promise that ' over a million bricks mad© by prison labour would be available, and that the site would also-be excavated by prison labour. It is only fair to say that , these two promises were never verified by the Government, and as a result the bricks wore carted to an- ' other Government contract in the city, »nd the board had to cart others back to the site for the now college. I do not think even tho Minister of _Education would call this piO°d business. Hthen the Government m its wisdom decided on a policy of paying the prison labour or its dependants for the work done, and so we have paid back to tho Prisons Department the sum of £1542 for excavating work, and the ■ job is not yet done. , . ~ Now we come to the point where the question of building the new college ' arose and our Mr. Trobo, got out sketch plans of the general irequiremonta. which wedo submitted to the Department and adopti «d as » basis for the new work. Messrs, ©wan »id Gray Yonaa T

•appointed architects, and it being then the war period and al- , most impossible to let a contract owing to the uncertainty of both labopr and material, it was decided that the work should be carried out by the day labour system, contracts being let as far as possible for incidental parts. At this stage, Mr. La Trobe accepted a position on the staff of the Education Department, and Mr. Howell was appointed in his place. Permanent plans and specifications were drawn up and approved by the Government the estimated cost for the first half being approximately £45,000, and for the completed work over £lOO,OOO, these estimates being based on the prices then operating and the provision of the bricks and prison labour aforesaid. As Good Business Men. “We were authorised to proceed with the first half of the work, £1.5,000 having been previously voted for a' start. The board had no reason to think or expect that when the £15,000 was expended in foundations and walls partly up that the Government was going to call a halt, and so, as good business mpn (not had, as the Minister of Education. would make out) looked forward to a time when certain material and works appertaining to the finished half of the college would be required, and ordered bv indent from the Old Land the necessary material. They also let eontrarts-'for the whole., drainage, as certainly a part of it could not be done'and left, and proceeded with the work, with tho result that when they had spent between £13.000 and £14,000 and made commitments as above for another £6OOO or £7OOO we were told that there was no money, and we had been most unbusinesslike in going beyond the vote. Now, supposing that thinffs had been normal, and the authorities had been able to vote the further sums to complete jjhe first half of the\college as authorised, and the board had neglected to look forward to the time 'when this material and drainage work was required for the due performance of the work, and it had to be’ stopped for this reason, what would have been said about its business methods then? As a master builder, it is no good the Minister ,of Education talking to me about unbusinesslike methods under such conditions. Remove This Scandal. “The board had a right to expect that the work would never be allowed to stop after waiting «o many years during which the students of this civy attending our technical classes were doing so under conditions that were a crying scandal to the Government of the day—conditions that, if they hail been known, would have caused tho parente themselves to rise in anger against the authorities. The board have struggled along and have removed the worst conditions by taking the pupils to the new building, unfinished as it is. The building is now in such a position and state of construction that, unless it is proceeded with, it will rapidly deteriorate. Whilst I do not personally care what Auckland or any other centre succeeds in getting bv way of public expenditure, I do say that no work in. the Domiriion can be more urgent than that thie part of nur Technical College should be proceeded with, nay, the whole work finished. Surely it is better to finish something, rather than have large works partly done all over the Dominion and nothing completed. Quite outside my position as' chairman of this board, as a citizen, I call upon the Government to meet its responsibility and remove this scandal from our midst.”