The Gisborne Harbor.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 170, 17 July 1888, Page 2

The Gisborne Harbor.

SIR G. WHITMORE’S SPEECH IN THE COUNCIL. The Hon. Sir G. S. Whitmore, in the Legislative Council, in moving the motion standing in his name, said he was speaking on behalf of a district which considered that it was being very cruelly treated by the abuse of local government at Gisborne. That port had been given a harbor on the distinct understanding that it was to open roads to the interior for the purpose of bringing down produce, which might have paid for the interest on the money that the harbor was to cost. On this understanding the district submitted to be taxed for the harbor, although it had not at the time access to it by land. Since then, not only had the entire country revenue been taken and spent round the town, but a large sum of money which bad been voted by the Government for the purpose of opening up the district had been allowed to lapse, and had not been spent at all, beyond the expenses of an inspecting engineer. The community was, as a matter of fact, so small and young that it was hardly old enough to have local government, and there was practically but one local body, as the same men resolved themselves from a County Council to a Municipality, from a Municipality to a Harbor Board, and eo on. This local body, at the instigation of certain persons of the place, obtained from the Government of the day, in some unaccountable manner, permission to erect harbor-works not where the Act provided, but in a totally different place. Gisborne was approached by a little ditch of a river, with some 4ft. or sft. of water on the bar, and it was intended by Sir John Coode to take advantage of a reef of rooks which ran out some little way beyond the river’s mouth and enclose a large acreage of water, thus affording a harbor of refuge for the coast, where large shipping could enter. This, however, had the drawback that between the place where the works would be going on, and where numbers of men would be unemployed, and the town, there was a little space of about three-quar-ters of a mile, on which some persons pointed out that new places of business and publichouses could be erected, to the injury of the business people in the town. Consequently, avowedly on this ground a scheme was devised under which the harbour should he made not at the place for which the county had agreed to tax itself, but should be created by forming a kind of training-wall from the mouth of the river, to run out parallel with the shore at a short distance from a sandy beach. Opinion was divided even in Gisborne itself, where they recognised the advantage o* having the expenditure carried on in the neighbourhood of their own publichouses ■ for there were some persons there who saw the manifest injury that would be done to the district, as no vessels would be able to go behind this thing. He might say that he himself had spoken to every one of the captains of the steamers trading on the Bast Coast, and every one of them said that he would not take his vessel in behind such works unless ordered hy the company to do so, ond unless the responsibility were taken off his shoulders. Outside feeling grew strong on the point, and the result was that last year—it having been discovered that the members of the Harbour Board were personally responsible for having deviated from the plan they brought down—another Act was asked for to “ whitewash ” them for this strange malversation of money ; and on the express condition that they should spend no more than £65,000 the Local Bills Committee of the Council allowed the Bill to pass. Many reasons might have contributed to induce them to do this. The manifest impossibility of recovering might have induced them to regard the liability as a small thing. All that they attached to the Bill by way of penalty was to place a penalty on each member of the Board of £lOO if they spent more than the £05,000. Another thing allowed by the Act was that £25,000 out of the £200,000 borrowed might bo applied as a nucleus for a Sinking Fund, to increase by compound interest. The Board, which had not at that time spent the £65,000, discovered that they might claim to spend £90,000 if they said that it was not stated whether this £«u,000 was to be inclusive or exclusive of the £25,000. They therefore had gone on spending this money. He did not know whether the Controller or Auditor-General had the power to stop thousands and thousands of pounds being misspent, but he very much wished he had got that power. He was indined to think that that gentleman was not employed to stop £25 from being paid to this or that member of the Legislature, but something more important was to be expected from that*great official; and if he bad the interests of a young and large district in his hands and could protect it from this waste of money, he wonld be doing a much more valuable duty than by stooping the payment of these few halfpence. If he had not the power to do this it would be given him as soon us possible.