THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1926. RECLAMATION.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 211, 24 August 1926, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE. TUESDAY, AUGUST 24, 1926. RECLAMATION.

If the obstructive tactics that have so long been pursued by Napier’s three elective members and the two ministerial nominees on the Napier Harbour Board have resulted in no other good, they have at least had the effect of bringing the question of reclamation of the Board’s endowment lands more prominently to the fore. As will be seen from the report in another column of this issue, the question was quite vigorously discussed at last night’s meeting of the Napier Chamber of Commerce. It is true that, as seems inevitable with Napier people, it was considered almost exclusively from the point of view of purely Napier interests. All the indignation expressed would appear to have arisen from the fact that difficulty was being experienced in providing land upon which the residential area of the town could be extended. No word seems to have been uttered with regard to the much more important question of providing land upon which a port for the Hawke’s Bay district could be developed. This, of course, is a quite characteristic attitude, but it is one from which it might have been hoped an organisation such as that concerned last night would have been able to make some little departure, and so have admitted the broader interests of the district into its deliberations.

However, disappointing as the dominant local note of last night’s discussion must be to the country folk of Hawke’s Bay, whose interests seem to be so little regarded in Napier, it is still something to know that at length Napier people are being compelled, by force of their ,own circumstances, to acknowledge the great potential value of the Harbour Board’s at present useless land endowment. Up till quite recently both their representative men and their press have stubbornly refused to allow the factor of reclaimed land values to have any place, let alone a deciding place, in the discussion of the harbour problem. They have persistently dodged this issue and kept it in the background. The country folk, on the other hand, whose view is probably clearer because it is taken from a tittle distance, are thoroughly convinced that leclamation is an absolutely decisive feature in the scheme of harbour construction. In it they see their own and only possible hope—and one very clearly visible —of ultimate escape from the burden of harbour rates. Beyond this, and not so very far away, they see a future when from reclaimed lands may be drawn such a volume of revenue that harbour dues will be so greatly reduced that their produce will be shipped away and their imported consumables landed at greatly reduced cost. But these fair prospects do not arise from providing the Napier people with cheap sites on the outer fringe of their present town upon which to build homes for their own exclusive comfort and enjoyment. They come from the confident realisation that land of almost unlimited area and, acre for afire, of immeasurably greater present and prospective value can be secured in immediate proximity to an up-to-date harbour. For them that is the only thing in the way of reclamation that really counts, because it is the only thing that promises them any substantial relief. But what are they to think of a capital town whose three representatives, aided by the two ministerial nominees, set themselves diligently to work in order to baulk the majority decision of the eight elected country representatives to make a start with this, to them, all-important work ? Why, again, is it that such a body as the Napier Chamber of Commerce did not venture even to moot this subject, of such great concern to the country people? Recent events had brought it inescapably to public attention yet this assemblage of Nap : business men let last ni'h s opportunity go without any o cci

reference to it. What is the irresistible conclusion the country folk must draw?

The chairman of last night’s meeting almost plaintively pointed to the fact that, ‘‘without the will of the people from Napier to Waipukurau and for thirty miles in the other direction,” Napier town could not get room to extend. Is it not a patent fact that the representatives of these same people promptly brought forward a plan by which Napier’s wants in this respect would be filled ? Is it not an equally patent fact that Napier’s own representatives, in their blind antagonism, have so far prevented its adoption simply because there was a collateral proposal to do something towards fulfilling the country people’s declared wishes? The Napier press professes to deprecate the setting of town against country upon the harbour question. But has it done anything at all to modify the sentiment of hostility that must necessarily arise when the big country majority sees itself thwarted in every possible direction by the town minority? If town is set against country, then there can be no possible doubt as to where the movement began. It began, and still continues, in the town that allows itself to be represented by those who not only give no heed to serving the interests and desires of the country people, but most actively oppose and obstruct them.