THE COUNTIES ACT

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 256, 27 July 1939, Page 13

THE COUNTIES ACT

Need For Overhaul This Session Stressed

The main legislation governing the activities of county councils was the Counties’ Act and that should be overhauled this session, if at all- possible, and conference decisions agreed to by the Government incorporated in it said the president of the New Zealand Counties’ Association, Mr. C. J. Talbot, in an address at the biennial conference of the association in Wellington yesterday. A large number of remits submitted to every conference were approved and were referred to the various Government departments for consideration, said Mr. Talbot. Many were agreed to. But there the association’s work seemed to reach a dead-end. Practically no major legislation affecting county councils had been enacted since 1927. when the Counties Act received its last overhaul.

Most of the conference decisions fall within the purview of the Department of Internal Affairs, and to the Minister in Charge, he would respectfully suggest that his department should initiate a planned programme of Statute overhauling, say the Counties Act this year, the Rating Act next year, the Electoral Act the following year, and so on. Thus in a cycle of five or six years the essence of all the association’s remits accepted by the Government would appear in the legislation of the country, and the work of the conferences made more visible and tangible.