A LOST OPPORTUNITY

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8481, 16 July 1913, Page 6

A LOST OPPORTUNITY

We are entitled to express some surprise that Mr J. B. Hino, M.P., did not refer in his speech in the House of Representatives yesterday to a little transaction at Stratford exposed in our columns last March. We refer to the purchase by the Railway Department, from a supporter of “Reform,” of a section of land which was valued for rating purposes at £3OO (capital value), and for which tho lucky vendor received £I2OO. The difference between the rating value and tho high price paid by tho ratepayers, per medium of “Reform,” has never been satisfactorily explained. Has Mr Hine, who is the member for Stratford, forgotten tho occurrence? Surely not. It would have been appropriate in more ways than one if Mr Hine had asked for an inquiry. In the first place, tho transaction took place in his own district; and, furthermore, Mr Hine has—or used to have —a special taste for prying into strange places and ferreting out events and circumstances which required a political muck-rako to bring them to light. Surely the gentleman who carried tho banner of “anti-Tammanyism” a couple of years or so ago ought to have been aroused into some sort of interest by this Stratford deal! Why is ho silent ? Has “the advent of ‘Reform’ ” blinded his hitherto over-sharp eyes and sealed his one-time ready lips? Hero is an item of £9OO of public money put into a political supporter’s pocket by a Government department—tbat is to say, £I2OO is paid for land declared by the borough valuer to be worth, with improvements, only £3O0 —and yet Mr Hine the purist, Mr Hine the vigilant, Mr Hino tho fearless exposer of misdeeds, in whoso very town the deal is made, has not one single little question to ask of those responsible 1 We .shall really have to deplore more than ever that historic event known as “the advent” if it sends erstwhile watchful guardians of public morality to sleep in this extraordinary manner.