THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1888.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9020, 5 April 1888, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, APRIL 6, 1888.

Evidently the Auckland Harbour Board has become frightened of its own shadow. Barely a week has elapsed since we had the pleasure of congratulating the members on a seemingly honest attempt at financial reform, which they had instituted by entering on a reduction of official expenditure. It is not for us to surmise the influences that have been at work since then; but now it would be "monstrous" and it would be' " absurd " to do what the Harbour Board resolved. We say the " Harbour Board," because, though it was in committee, it to a " committee of the whole House f and, as we see by comparing lists, the members then present were, with only one or two additions, the members who now see it to be monstrous and absurd to proceed with the retrenchment which they had then resolved upon. Not unnaturally, it is the chairman of the Board that has led the opposition to retrenchment. It was under Mr. Waddel's protracted regime as Mayor that the city drifted into the tremendous indebtedness under which the ratepayers are groaning now ; and it is his unhappy tendency to let things drift, that the public have to fear more than anything else in relation to the precarious finance of the Harbour Board. Mr. Waddel is a gentleman of magnificent indifference to the lavish expenditure -of public •money; and it is perfectly characteristic that he considers the abolition of the engineer's department, when that department has nothing legitimate to do, as being "monstrous." He said the Harbour Board could no more go on without an engineer's department than a gentleman could drive his carriage without a horse. But many a gentleman has to dispense, not only with his horses, but his carriage too, in the pressure of retrenchment;, and we venture to think that if members of the Harbour $oard were as conscientiously sensitive to the public interest as they are individually to their own, not even the Chairman would insist on the Harbour Board keeping its carriage and horses to drive, when prudence tells us it should walk. And we further say that it would be far more becoming in the Harbour Board to " re-consider" not only the excessive charges levied on goods and shipping which are acting so disastrously to the interests of the port, and re-consider the case of lessees who are suffering from exorbitant rents, than to re-con-sider an attempt made by the Harbour Board itself to curtail unnecessary expenditure on a department for which there is confessedly nothing to do.

In referring to the report of this reactionary meeting of the Board, held yesterday, we find that those opposing retrenchment are good enough to admit that it might be necessary to make changes, such as to reduce salaries," &c., but when this is to be done they shirk it. There is a great deal of human nature in this form of retrenchment. We admit that disagreeable things ought to be done, but we won't do them because they are disagreeable. At the meeting last week the Harbour Board resolved—and apparently nemine eontradicentethat certain retrenchment must be done; this week it is resolved that it shall not be done. Now no one should feel disposed to advocate anything of the nature of panic retrenchment. . The Board is certainly far exceeding its legiti- ] mate revenue, but the case is not so bad as to necessitate that ; but under any circumstances a department should not be maintained for which there is literally nothing to do. It was urged that it is absurd to dispense with the Engineer's Department while the graving dock is incomplete. Do the Board intend to proceed with the completion of Dock Calliope 1 It is understood that it will require a sum of at least £25,000 to complete that dock. Does the Board mean to proceed just now with the spending of that amount 1 Is there no lesson at all to be taught our administrators from the necessities of , the times?: And are the administrators of our public trusts to go on committing extravagances - after the manner of private persons who have been blundering into all kinds of extravagance of speculation until they have been pulled

I • ' , V -V./. •up with a round turn, and have been ' obliged to stop by the sheer force of ' having no more money to squander Are our local public administrators, in the face of all this, to go on plunging merely because they can raise the money by pawning the public estate?" And, with this object in view, are they to be allowed by the public to maintain a spending department for which there really nothing to do except what work may be created for it in the prosecution of the same reckless plunging 1 ' Does the Harbour Board really mean to raise the balance of loan which it was wisely advised by the Bank not to raise Or does it mean even .to persist in spending the balance of loan already in hand, and said to be on fixed deposit? Why it was only a few weeks ago that we were shown in the Estimates of ways and means, the interest accruing from this very deposit as a part of the revenue to be expended on general accounts? And' if these moneys are not to be so spent, , what, we would ask, are the new engineering works to be undertaken, which will necessitate the continuance of the Engineer's Department? And assuming as we are no doubt warranted in assuming that the balance to credit will be expended as rapidly as possible, is it not more than swallowed up in prospect by the works already engineered, and which will only require the oversight of the foreman of works for their completion 1 It is of course very good-natured on the part of the chairman. and the other members of the Board who have had new impressions conveyed to their minds during the week, to interpose their vote, and the double vote of the Chairman, in the way of retrenchment but if there is, as there is, no work necessitating the continuance of the Engineer's Department, then it is something worse than inexcusable to throw away public money on a sinecure office in the face of the hiatus between legitimate revenue and expenditure disclosed in the general account of the Harbour - Board. .In Wellington, where they have engineering works yet to be done, they get over the difficulty of expense by rolling two officers into one, and making the secretary of the Board also engineer of the harbour; and considering how little of an engineering character there is to be done in the Waitemata for the next year or two, we dare say that our active and energetic secretary would feel himself fully competent to undertake the engineering work of the harbour. We regret that this question of retrenchment should have to be fought in relation to individuals, as if it partook of a personal character. We believe the Engineer of the Harbour is generally regarded, and justly so, as an able and thoroughly competent officer— little expensive in his works perhaps, but still an excellent engineer; and the question of his undoubted competency is quite irrelevant. But the regrettable feature in the whole affair is that the Board should haVe exhibited so little "backbone"in the work of retrenchment, that the very first attempt made in the direction of economical reform is forthwith overturned. The matter is referred back to the j committee, which means that a week i or two more will be given for the other members to be " worked and the, prospect of the Harbour Board really bringing back its finance to a sound footing thus vanishes into thin air.