ANOTHER REPLY

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 64, 2 March 1929, Page 4

ANOTHER REPLY

On another page of this issue will be found a further letter from Mr. P. F. Higgins upon the evergreen topic of the Napier Harbour. This communication has been afforded space only out of courtesy to the writer —a rather surprising thing to him, no doubt, when he comes to contrast it with the typo of journalism with which he is more closely associated. It raises no issues that have not already Deen quite sufficiently discussed in our columns. The extent of loss suffered by freezing companies is a quite subsidiary question. He has his authority and we have ours, who speaks from something like thirty years of intimate ass-?-ciation with the industry in this district. Apart altogether from this, Mr. Higgins and ourselves are quite agreed on the main point as to the need for providing better accommodation for oversea shipping. We differ, and differ fundamentally, on the question as to where this is to be provided and, unless Mr. Higgins suffer'! conversion, we shall continue differ. He can take it for certain that we shall need a good deal more than has been so far forth coming to convert us to an advocacy of the utterly and hopelessly barren project of the Breakwater as a permanent principal harbe n for the Hawke’s Bay district. Mr. Riggins asks us to “get to gether.” We have been “getting together” for a good few -.'ears now with those who we believe aie sincerely, and without personal ends to serve, studying the best interests not only of the Hawke’s Bay district generally, but even the Napier business community as a whole. When Mr. Higgins cea v es his factious and provocative tp position to the expressed wishes of the vast majority, in both number and rateable value, of the electors of the harbour district we may possibly “get together” with him also. We repeat what we have told him already, that wt, cannot consider the question of providing temporarily for oversea shipping at the Breakwater until

we know what is wanted and what it is going to cost. The letter from the Board to the shipping representatives, appearing to-day under his own letter, shows that the first step towards this end has been taken. It is quite useless for Mr. Higgins to pursue his patent attempt to draw our fire prematurely, and so there can be no useful purpose served by further discussion of the subjects he continues to labour. We rather fancy that Mr. Higgins, in his genial Hibernian way, is “just putting a little bit of a joke onto us.” If not, then all we can say is that ‘‘ln vain doth the fowler” —or even the guileless farmer—“spread his net in the sight of the bird.” '