THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1908. MANUKAU HARBOUR.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13725, 15 April 1908, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 15, 1908. MANUKAU HARBOUR.

The decision of the Auckland Harbour Board to instruct its solicitors to prepare a Bill, for presentation to Parliament, enabling it to assume control of the Manukau Harbour, is a step which means much for the common interests of the port of Auckland and of the subsidiary port of Onehunga. If the Bill is wisely and intelligently drawn up, it ought to remove the objections which have been raised to the unification of the control of the two harbours. Onehunga has not been equitably treated by the Government for many years. There has always been a grudging disposition displayed towards it, and no activity whatever has been shown in making its wharfage adequate for its trade, or its harbour fairway deep enough for its vessels. At the present moment there is even less consideration shown it than usualscanty as is the consideration it received at the best. The Government affects to think that the opening of the Auck-land-Wellington connection will undermine the prosperity and check the progress of this western gateway of the Northern metropolis, and has therefore ceased to make any improvement to the Manukau harbourage, and refuses to consider applications for the better equipment of the Onehunga wharfage. The Government apparently only knows Onehunga and the Manukau in connection (with the railway; service,

and although this may be merely an excuse to avoid spending money in ihe North, it has the very practical effect of suspending all expenditure of Government money upon a harbour and wharfage which are still under Departmental control. We are most emphatically of opinion that the opening of the Main Trunk will have no permanent effect upon the Onehunga trade, or upon the use made of the Manukau, and we sympathise altogether with the indignation of Onehunga at its most cavalier treatment by the Government. But because the Government has been unfair and unjust to Onehunga and the Manukau should not turn feeling against the Auckland Harbour Board. Nor will it do so, we believe, if the Board recognises in its Bill the indubitable rights and claims of Onehunga to consideration and provides for that port such ample and even generous representation as will assure it of impartial and encouraging treatment. This ought to be the spirit in which the Waitemata authority regards those who are more immediately interested in the Manukau. For, after all, the interests of the two harbours are identical. They are twin and can only be developed to the greatest pitch of possible progress and advancement in co-ordination with one. another.

Greater Auckland is bound to ocI cupy in the comparatively near future the whole of the isthmus lying between the two waters. There is already no gap between the residential areas which occupy this wonderful neck of land ; the trade, the industries, the interests and the prospects of all its inhabitants are already interwoven and inseparable. Waitemata is the most notable side simply because it offers incomparably the best entrance, and the best harbourage, but Manukau is inevitably the port of the west coast, and as that coast develops must gather to itself an ever-increasing trade. The whole of the trade of both the Waitemata and the Manukau comes to what we call " Auckland," and this must continue.' as long as a civilised people occupies the country. To continue the separate control of the two harbours could advantage nobody in the end, and would certainly tend to hamper and handicap the development of the Manukau. And in the development of the Manukau, in the opening up of its channels, the provision of adequate wharfage, with modern equipment, the overcoming of its many natural difficulties, the drawing to it of a trade which otherwise will go to Wellington or New Plymouth or some other maritime centre, Auckland City is quite as interested as Onehunga. For the trade of Onehunga comes to Auckland, as we all know ; and if the Manukau is outstripped as a harbour, and if west coast trade goes somewhere else, it is Auckland that suffers the chief loss. This evident consideration might well convince all who have any interest in the Manukau side that they have everything to gain by combining these interests with those ,of the Auckland Harbour Board, which is strong' enough and wealthy enough to make the most of the Manukau, as it has every reason to do. As for a connecting canal, it is not possible for that to be taken in hand until the extensive schemes already in hand have been worked near to completion, and the better opening up of the Manukauanother extensive and expensive work —would also have to precede any canalisation. So that it must be ten years at least before any project for connecting the two harbours is attempted, enough time to thrash the while matter out, and to come to a definite and harmonious conclusion as to the best course to pursue. We repeat that there can be no true divergence of interests in. the matter of the two harbours, which can fairly and economically be brought under one administration and control ; and the sooner this is done the better it will certainly be for all concerned.