BRIDGE COMMITTEE DEPUTATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20259, 20 May 1929, Page 14

BRIDGE COMMITTEE DEPUTATION.

Sir, —I was astonished to read in your columns of recent date an account of what I considered a most studied insult by this deputation, which waited upon the Minister of Internal Affairs, levelled against the member for Waitemata, Mr. A. Harris, M.P. I was also surprised to note that the Minister could so far forget his dignity and his duty to a fellow member of the Legislature to have allowed this insult to be levied at the member for the district without a rebuke. The Minister, in his reply to Mr. Harris, is quite right when he says that it is no function of his to decide the personnel of any deputation, but as an old member of -the House and a Minister of the Crown, and as he received a wire of protest from Mr. Harris before he received the deputation, he should have 'put those responsible for this insult in their place. What strikes me as a strange procedure is that the Minister of Internal Affairs should have been the Minister to receive the deputation on a question o:;' public works. The subject of the Waitemata Harbour bridge was a matter which one would have thought should have ioeesi. dealt with either by the Minister of Public Woiks or, the Minister of Marine. However, it mattered not, for the information was common knowledge as far back as last month. I was perfectly well aware that this great, window-dressing stunt and the pilgrimage of the ten disciples to Wellington was to take place. It was all arranged that a most representative deputation should go to Wellington and be met by a Minister of the Crown. Any Minister would do for the job, as the Government wero already aware of what the deputation had to lay before them and the reply to the deputation was to ba nothing else but what they received. However, if the members of the deputation will attend the meeting of the Prime Minister, to be held early in June, in tlio Town Hall, Auckland, they will no doubt receive the final decision of Cabinet upon this important matter, and they will be told that the decision of Cabinet is that the harbour bridge across the Waitemata will have thp strongest support of the Government, and it will be undertaken as Government work. It is really a pity, considering the finances of the Bridge Association, that any money should have been expended by sending the ten disciples to Wellington, when the information thev went to seek was as well known no doubt to some of them as it was known to myself. The Government no doubt will give a most satisfactory reply to the deputation, but no doubt a -large quantity of water will run under the bridge while it is still in the air. Concrete-