SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19419, 30 August 1926, Page 8

SCHOOL OF AGRICULTURE.

The New Zealand Agricultural College is to be formally established when the bill now before Parliament becomes law. Most of the measure deals with issues settled by preliminary negotiation. The new feature is the council for which provision is made. The school has to be created virtually out of nothing. A site has been selected and a certain sum of money is available as endowment. Neither of these makes a school of agriculture, though both are important adjuncts. The Souncil is the vital factor. It will have in its hands the shaping of the new institution. In the circumstances, its personnel is left very vague by the bill. The Board of Agriculture is to nominate one member; no exception can be taken to this. Four others are to be appointed by the Governor-in-Counoil. There is no suggestion who they shall be, or what qualifications are to be considered in selecting them. A good choice may be .made, and a good tradition established, but there will be no guarantee of continuity in any policy for filling the positions. This Government will have absolute discretion in selecting members ; it may do its duty admirably. But subsequent Governments will have like powers, and may or may not exercise them with equal discretion. This uncertainty might have been avoided

by a little more definition in the provision for State representation. Eveii statutory requirements would not bind subsequent Governments, but any variation would have to be the work of Parliament, with fullopportunity for discussion. The remaining four vacancies are to be filled by the councils of the Auckland University College and Victoria College, each of which will send two representatives to the council of the school. Surely it would have been wiser to have made these university rather than college appointments. It is a New Zealand School of Agriculture. Auckland and Wellington have pooled certain interests, but the result has been the establishment of- a school, not for these two provinces, but for New Zealand. Its Dominion character should be more specifically recognised in the council than it is proposed to be by the bill just brought down.