MINISTER UNDER FIRE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 152, 30 June 1938, Page 10

MINISTER UNDER FIRE

WATERFRONT WORK

ATTITUDE CRITICISED

The attitude of the Minister of I Finance (the Hon. W. Nash), in his capacity as a member of the Wellington Harbour Board, to a stoppage of work on the Wellington waterfront was the subject of comment by Mr. W. J. Poison (National, Stratford) during the debate on the Imprest Supply Bill in the House of Representatives yesterdev afternoon.

Mr, Poison recalled that when the House last discussed the question of work on the waterfront the Ministers j had met them very fairly. Opposition members were told that if the circumstances were as described there could be no objection to a public inquiry into what was happening on the waterfront. Mr. Nash was quite definite that that was his view. Some time later Opposition members were amazed at the attitude taken up by the Minister when it was reported to the Wellington Harbour Board that becauseof rain or some other cause the waterside workers had declined to load a consignment of chilled beef, which was eventually loaded by the ship's crew.

The Harbour Board had had something to say about the happening, Mr. Poison continued, and Opposition memibers expected him to deal faithfully with the question and in the way that he had done in the House. But he was reported to have defended the men, and to have said that the waterside workers were just as much primary producers as the farmers. He added that he could quite understand the men wanting to go home to their tea; their wives would be anxious and their arrangements upset. Finally, Mr. Nash had said, "Isn't it correct that the agreement provides that the men shall not work in the rain?"

The goods themselves were very often produced in the rain, and the farmers had a right to expect that the men who worked on the wharves would do- something to put the produce