REPORTS DENIED.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 4 March 1937, Page 8

REPORTS DENIED.

INCIDENTS OF ME. SEMPLE’S TOTJE. Some of the newspaper reports from the South Island last week about the Minister of Public Works, Hon. E. Semple, smashing a wheelbarrow with a tractor, and having on another occasion, his car towed into town by an old “rattletrap” of the class he had condemned, were described by the Minister yesterday “as a tissue of lies unworthy of modern journalism.” In making an emphatic protest against such Press statements the Minister says: — “It is true that my car broke down, but it is certainly not true that I was towed into Ashburton by a ‘rattletrap.’ When my car f ailed, I was given a tow by a lorry driver, who. was good enough to go some miles out of his way to help me. I must say in fairness to the lorry driver that his vehicle could not by any stretch of the imagination be classed as junk. It is also untrue to say that the garage proprietor told me I could not get my car fixed owing to the 40-hour week. I did not have any conversation with the garage proprietor; I was in a hurry to get to Christchurch and I immediately hired another car to take me there. These statements are absolutely false.”-

“I have noticed also that the Press has told the public that I deliberately ran over a wheelbarrow when driving a tractor at the opening of the Christchurch aerodrome works. From my position at the wheel of the tractor I could not see the barrow, and did not know I had run over it until after I had ‘dismounted. I learnt subsequently that the bai’row, a rickety old affair, had been placed under the tractor as a joke by one of the men. The barrow was really unfit for further service. I have too much regard for my responsibilities as a trustee of public money to destroy public property, and it is grossly unfair that such statements should be published. They are a tissue of lies and unworthy of .modern journalism. I hope that in the future the Press will realise its responsibilities instead of trying to misrepresent a Minister of the Crown by paltry and false statements. ’ ’