Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1950. Harbour Board Changes

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 April 1950, Page 4

Greymouth Evening Star. SATURDAY, APRIL 1, 1950. Harbour Board Changes

ABOUT four years ago the Local Government Committee, appointed by the Labour-Socialist Government, made a thorough inquiry into the local body system in New Zealand. Among its recommendations was one that all harbour ’boards should consist only of members directly representing the electors. In other words, all members should be chosen by popular vote in the ordinary way at local elections. At that time some of the boards in control of harbour affairs included a minority of members appointed by the Government and by the payers of harbour dues. The Local Government Committee had in mind the elimination of this system of appointment, holding that there was no justification for it. It was not suggested that such members were not capable of giving good service; the system was condemned only because it was undemocratic. Government nominees, it was stated, were not able to

express Government policy, and shipowners and payers of dues passed their charges on to the 'general public and thus their claim to special representation could not stand. In spite of this recommendation—and in spite of the fact that its own members of the committee subscribed to the recommendation —the Labour-Socialist Government proceeded to take action perpetuating this undemocratic system. It passed legislation providing for the appointment of representatives of wharf workers to harbour boards. The appointments were duly made. Its only justification for this action was its argument that the wharf unions were as much entitled to representation as were the payers of dues. By the same token, sectional interests are as much entitled to appoint their nominees to city, borough, and county councils as are the ratepayers who provide most of the finance for these local bodies. The criticism made at the time, that the Govetnment’s action had all the elements of a conciliatory gesture towards militant unionists, seems to have been firmly founded. That is the recent background to the National Government’s decision, announced this week, to abolish all special representation on harbour boards and to make them fully elective as from next November. By acting thus, in accordance with its General Election policy, the Government has given full power to the electors and has reversed in one more particular the trend in the opposite direction, which was started by the previous Administration early in its term of office and which had gained greater momentum in recent years. Another welcome movement is that designed to return to hospital boards some measure of the responsibility taken from them in recent years in pursuit of the previous Government’s centralisation policy. While it cannot be gainsaid that the Government, because of the changed circumstances of health administration, particularly in relation to finance, has a duty to keep a watchful eye on hospital boards, there is simply no case for the policy followed in recent years. This policy was tending more and more to make the hospital boards mere rubber stamps for the decisions of centralised bureaucracy.