THE NEW POST OFFICE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21600, 22 March 1932, Page 3

THE NEW POST OFFICE

A QUESTION OF FUNDS INCONSISTENCY ALLEGED In reply to a protest forwarded to tlie Minister of Public Works (Mr J. G. Coates) by the Dunedin Builders and Contractors’ Industrial Union of Employers against the Government’s proposal to erect a new six-floored State Eire Office in Christchurch, while the building of a new post office in Dunedin has been held up indefinitely, the secretary of the union (Mr A. S. Cookson) has received a communication from the Minister stating that the building referred to is contemplated by the State Fire Insurance Department for the purpose of providing improved accommodation for the Christchurch office of that department. The writer points out that the proposal is to erect it from the accumulated funds of the State Fire Insurance Office, and not from the ordinary loan funds of the Government, as would have been the case with the Dunedin Post Office, and adds that the erection of the building is really in the nature of an investment by the State Fire Department for some of its accumulated funds.

On behalf of the union, Mr Cookson has written to the Minister as follows: “ Your letter in reply to the protest which was made against the building of an addition to the Government buildings in Christchurch, while the erection of the Dunedin Post Office has been deferred indefinitely, has now been submitted to the members of my union for consideration. When answering an inquiry on the subject of the Dunedin Post Office on October 5 last, Mr W. Downie Stewart said he understood the building was being erected by the Post and Telegraph Department out of its own reserve fund. As Minister of Finance Mr Stewart would be hardly likely to have made that statement unless such a reserve fund was in existence, and there does not appear to my* members to be any distinction between one Government department utilising its reserve fund to erect a building while another is not permitted to do so. There is no desire on the part of my union to embarrass the Government by pressing unduly for the erection of the Dunedin Post Office, but the action of the Government in sanctioning the expenditure of a large sum of money in Christchurch while in exactly similar circumstances, except for the magnitude of the amount involved, it refuses to do so in Dunedin, appears, to say the least, to savour of inconsistency. In both cases the intention apparently was to house other Government departments besides those immediately concerned, and from information received it appears that but a comparatively small portion of the new Christchurch building will be occupied by the State Fire Office.”