MASONIC HOTEL

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXII, Issue 268, 27 October 1932, Page 9

MASONIC HOTEL

THE GOVERNMENT LOANS .i ■ . CRITICISM OF PROCEDURE. COMMENT IN THE HOUSE. (By Telegraph—Special to “Tribune.”) Wellington, Oct. 26. L'he action of two Government departments and the Unemployment Board m advancing a total of £44,000 on mortgage for the i econstruction of the Masonic Hotel, Napier, has renewed prominence in the House since Mr W. E. Barnard (Napier) raised the question last night. Mr C. A. Wilkinson (Egmont) undertook a scathing criticism of the procedure to-day. He said that the House should raise its voice in protest against the use of public moneys for a venture of the kind. Not one settler in New Zealand could borrow £1 from the State Advances Office, and yet that department had advanced £21,000 on first mortgage. The State Advances Office had been instituted to assist settlers. The same applied to the Public Trust Office, and if a settter went to. that department he could not get £l, yet that office was prepared to advance by way of second mortgage the sum of £15,000, and at the same time it threatened with eviction those who could not pay up. It was a crying shame.

' STILL MAKING MISTAKES. They also found that the people’s tatfhs were being used through the Unemployment Board in the same way £BOOO having been loaned by the board on third mortgage. The total value of the three mortgages was £44,000, which was £2OOO more than the contract price of the hotel. If mistakes had been made in this country in the past they were still making them today. ‘,‘lt is time members raised their voices m protest against the expenditure of public moneys in this fashion,” declared Mr Wilkinson. “In doing what it has done the State Advances Office has prostituted its use, and 1 hope a similar thing will not happen again.”. Hotel proprietors were surely well able to look after their own business, he added. No other section of the commercial community was favoured in the same way as hotel people Irrespective of the size of an hotel, they paid a license of £4O.

SHILLINGS FROM CHARWOMEN. Speaking on the question to-night, Mr D. McDougall (Mataura) said that no member of the House would care to. risk a third mortgage in Napier. Mr Barnard had championed this mortgage of £BOOO taken by the Unemployment Board for the reconstruction of an hotel. He was apparently quite prepared to take a shilling from shop girls and charwomen who came to Parliament House in the early hours of the morning, wet or dry, in order to build a public house in Napier. A public house was an institution which degraded workers who entered it. if there were a vote on the prohibition question the Postmaster-General (the Hon. A. Hamilton) and Mr J. McCombs (Lyttelton) would both be on toe water waggon shouting “strike out the top line,’* and yet they were prepared to take charwomen’s shillings for the construction of a public house. “If the Government persists in this sort of thing,” said Mr McDougall, “it is riding for a fall, and over that fall it will go as sure as I am alive. 1 came here to support the Government and I don’t want to put any obstacles in its way, but when it does wrong L intend to expose it.”