THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9014, 29 March 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 1888.

When we initiated agitation through these columns for the reform of harbour finance, our requital was somewhat warm resentment and hard knocks. Our figures were all wrong ; our conclusions were wholly unjustified ; and we were doing irreparable injury to the harbour by decrying the soundness of its finance. But, as has appeared in the sequel, our figures were all right our conclusions havo been amply justified, and we have rendered a lasting service to the interests of the harbour in having as we observe, stimulated the Harbour Board to enter on vigorous reform. We say "to enter on for the mere cutting down of salaries, isuch as has just taken place, if it is not followed up by a vigorous revision of tho whole method of procedure in the administration of the harbour, would be but sorry reform ; and we take it that the wholesale retrenchment in official expenses, which has been recommended by the Harbour Board in committee, will be followed to its legitimate conclusions.

Exactly a month before we entered on criticism on this subject, and less than three months from now, the Harbour Board had bravely resolved on voting salaries as they were for the year then beginning ; and though there was the voice of dissent within the Board itself, that was easily stifled, and salaries to the unreasonable extent of £5,418, as published at the time, were voted in globo for the year. Now, on reflection, it has been found that the work can be efficiently performed for less, and though the Board, in committee, have not gone half-way down the list, they have cut off the substantial amount of £1,320 a-year. It is not our province to say whether the excisions are the best, and reduction of salary in the case, at least, of one old and valued

servant of the public will be generally regretted. Yet such a large instalment of reform, resulting, we suppose it will be admitted, only from our action, shows at least that that action was not so reprehensible as was charged by captious critics. Some of the members of the Board were themselves, at first, the most vehement in protesting against our assertions as to the necessity for reform ; but we trust that now they have entered on reform, they will yield to none in pressing it on, until the Board, instead of drifting steadily to the bad from year to year, as they have been doing, will show a substantial profit set aside each year in anticipation of the necessities that will soon be arising in the inevitable decay of our wooden wharves. It is certainly very drastic action on the part of the Board to repeal the vote of annual salaries so very recently passed; but we are to recollect that such engagements are terminable by a month's notice, in accordance with the 46th by-law of the Harbour Board, which says : "All salaries for officers under the control of the Board shall be voted annually in the month of December, and all engagements entered into between the Board and its officers shall be terminable upon one month's notice being given on either side." Happily, therefore, the hasty action of the Harbour Board in December last in voting salaries, which, after providing for fixed and inevitable charges, there literally was not sufficient revenue to pay, has not been irreparable.

The most startling part of the retrenchment instituted is the total sweeping away of the Engineer's Department, with the exception of the foreman of works. It has been at all times an expensive department, not in the matter of salaries merely, but in the often needlessly costly character of the works carried out. So that the drain on the revenue intercepted here is something very far beyond the mere salary saved. However, apart from this, the reduction is sufficiently justified in the fact that the raison dJetre of the Engineer's department has passed away, in the fact that there is nothing further for the department to do. The voting of salaries for this department in December last— the Board must have clearly seen that the officers would have to labour assiduously to create some work or another to keep them employed, and to justify the payment of their salaries—was the most curious feature in that very curious proceeding ; and, if nothing else existed to justify the course we have taken, there has been abundant result in the prevention of many needless works, which would no doubt have been sanctioned by the Board with the laudable desire to keep the engineer's department from falling into that mischief which, we are told, Satan finds for the employment of idle hands.

And, now that the Harbour Board have honestly set themselves to reform, there is one matter seemingly of minor consideration, but really of vital importance, to which it is sincerely to be hoped they will attend : that is, having the accounts recast in such a form that they may be intelligible at a glance to the public, and, we would add, to the Harbour Board itself. The mixing up of " totara piles" and hoped-for moneys to be rescued from the clutch of contractors, and other problematical sources of irregular income, with legitimate revenue, has a bewildering effect; and as it is probable that the incongruous form of the accounts has been the cause of the " obfuscation " under which the Board have been voting salaries that they could not pay, and entering into undertakings which were not justified by the position of the finances, the placing of the accounts in the lucid and intelligible form in which the accounts, for instance, of the Lyttelton Harbour Board are submitted at their annual meeting, would go, perhaps, quite as far as retrenchment of salaries, in putting the Auckland Harbour Board on the way to attaining that position which ought to be the position of the administrators of the best and most wealthily - endowed harbour in the colony. „