A DISAPPOINTED DELEGATE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14806, 9 October 1911, Page 8

A DISAPPOINTED DELEGATE.

"DEMOCRACY FORGOTTEN."

Mr. W. Belcher, chairman of the Otago Harbour Board, declared his intention at the Harbours Conference in Wellington last week of using all his influence to prevent the Otago Harbour Board from being represented at any future conference of the Harbours Association. He was very disappointed at the lack of democratic tone on the nart of the delegates, and he thought that the working man did not get proper value for his representation on harbour boards. Too much had been made of the payers of dues, and democracy seemed to be forgotten. He had been brought up in a hard school of adversity himself— ship's foc'sle—and it pained him to find so little sympathy for his ideas among the delegates. * Mr. A. Bain, member of the Bluff Harbour Board, deprecated the action of Mr. Belcher in taking such a petty view of defeat ,on a question before the conference. He thought the conference could still go on if the Dunedin Harbour Board abstained from attendance. So far as he knew Mr. Belcher had first got on the Harbour Board as a Government nominee. (Voices: True; hear, hear.) He thought that was hardly a democratic method of representation. He, too, had had to suffer defeat, but he did not make such a noise about it as Mr. Belcher had done.