HARBOUR BOARD SEAT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20255, 15 May 1929, Page 14

HARBOUR BOARD SEAT.

GOVERNMENT NOMINEE. ATTITUDE OF MR. ALDRIDGE. What ho termed "a suggestion of political clucanery" with regard to his appointment in place of the Hon. E. W. Alison, M.L.C., was repudiated by Mr. E. Aldridge, the new Government nominee on the Auckland Harbour Board, at the meeting of the board yesterday. At the last meeting of the late board Mr. Alison referred to the manner in which his appointment had been terminated. He thought it regrettable that the Government had not notified him until tho day after the last date on which recommendations for tho appointment were receivable in Wellington. The notification, he said,. was in the form a brief telegram from the Secretary of the Marine Department. Replying yesterday to a welcome from tho chairman, Mr. Aldridge referred to the matter. "I neither spoke a word, nor lifted a finger, nor spent a postage-stamp over the matter," he continued. "When I was approached in the first place I said I was not prepared to accept the appointment. Then I was told that Mr. Alison would not be reappointed in any event, so I accepted."