LOANS TO LOCAL BODIES BOARD BILL.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 221, 4 September 1926, Page 6

LOANS TO LOCAL BODIES BOARD BILL.

(To the Editor.) Sir, —Can you explain the difference between above proposed authority and the Local Bills Committee of the Hensel ff the Local Bills Committee is incompetent to decide whether a loan should be raised by a local body for what purpose do we pay its members 1 If the expert evidence which is given before the Local Bills Committee is not expert, what guarantee, is there that it will more efficiently inform the proposed Loans Board? 1 would like to point out to the Premier that “our” party may not always be in power—he may tire of. the heavy swag he is carrying and sling it away, preferring to become, like the rest of us, again “just a cookie from up North.” What a rod for our backs may the Reform Party not be making when the Labour Party gets the reins, and the Government whips (Orders-in-Council and Local Body Loans Boards, etc.) become scorpions with a sting in the tail. In rejecting a recent Napier Harbour Board Bill a recommendation was made to the House that a commission be appointed to inquire into Napier harbour matters. Might I suggest to Sir Geo. Hunter that he ask simultaneously for inquiries into (a) a report which was made by a Government engineer on the entrance to the Wairoa River; (b) the resulting construction of the railway from Wairoa to Waikokopu; (c) the useless expenditure on a scheme now abandoned of some £30,000 at Waikokopu, undertaken with the full knowledge and superintendence of the same Government engineer; (d) the ultimate construction of a wharf outside ..the boulder bank at Waikokopu, and its cost; and (e) the latest afterthought of a sunken boat (the Talune) outside that again-

I think you will agree with me, Sir, although you do not pay £62 per annum harbour rates for nothing, that such marine engineering requires rigid scrutiny,—seeing that, as a result, we have a main trunk line to Gisborne opening up no country but following the coast all the way, built in absolute opposition to Lord Kitchener's advice, though the Imperial, Government sent him out here especially io advise us on defence.

One very good purpose this Local Body Loans Board will serve—it will create sufficient strength of local feelings to induce us to expose the experts. Wellington complains of -Hawke’s Bay’s methods at football! What about Wellington’s tactics to prevent Hawke's Bay’s commercial expansion by means of a safe deep, easily accessible economically worked port? If a commission sits on Napier Harbour affairs, as an old member of the Board, I should like to give evidence —because of my experience—banished from you for ten long years, a prisoner behind the Wairoa bar. That “pons asinorum” which has floored New Zealand’s highest marine authority, cost the country half a million in actual cash out of pocket, increased the rate on goods to Wairoa 35s per ton via Waikokopu, and destroyed the chief utility of the East Coast ifain Trunk Railway..—l am etc., EUSTACE LANE. Napier, 2/9/26.