THE NON-ELECTED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27346, 23 March 1950, Page 6

THE NON-ELECTED

One of the promises made in the National Party’s manifesto was the abolition of special representation on harbour boards. An official assurance that this policy will be implemented is now due. The terms of the members appointed under the Harbours Amendment Bill will shortly be expiring, and, in their interests, and in order to clarify the position for harbour boards throughout the Dominion, an early announcement is expected from the Government. The principle under which the sitting Government nominees—and, indeed, all nominees—attained to membership is. the negation of the democratic, elective system by which the people should be permitted to choose their own representatives to positions in local body government. It was a policy enacted by the Labour Administration for the strategic purpose of extending despotic control of the central Government over local bodies, for this principle of appointment of Government nominees was not intended to stop at harbour boards. The then Minister of Health, several years ago, foretold the intention to bring about a change in the system of hospital representation. “ I believe,” she said, “ that we should have Government appointees on hospital boards, and I intend to go into that question.”

The Local Government Committee, itself a creation of the Labour Government, was forthright in its condemnation of the methods the Government employed. The committee, in its report, stated:

The present system of appointing Government nominees on harbour boards has no justification. These nominees are unable to express Government policy and perform no democratic function. . . . We therefore recommend that the pro-

vision regarding Government nominees be repealed. The committee went further, recommending the abolition of all privileged appointments and a return to the complete democratic form of representation by election. Some of its comments are of particular interest:

The principle of allowing special interests to be represented on a harbour board is not one we are prepared to endorse. Ship owners and payers of dues [who at present have special representation] merely pass on their charges to the general public, and to allow them to dictate policy is quite undemocratic. . . . The principle is entirely wrong. For the same reasons as we think special representation on harbour boards should be cancelled, we are unable to agree to the suggestions that doctors and nurses should be represented on hospital boards. . . .

[lt has been] suggested that the Government should be represented on hospital boards. We do not agree with, that suggestion. For reasons similar to those discussed above, we consider that the appointments [of Government nominees on fire boards] are wrong in principle and unnecessary in fact. The strictures passed by the Local Government Committee and other persons concerned at the progressive bureaucratic encroachment on the democratic method of representation do not necessarily imply that all Government appointments were bad ones. Readers will have noticed a report in our columns yesterday in which members of the Nelson Harbour Board expressed their appreciation of the assistance that had been received from the two representatives of the waterfront industry who had been appointed to the board under the Harbours Amendment Bill. It is also worth recalling that the present chairman of the Otago Harbour Board is a Government nominee, the secretary of a large trade union, who was elected to the position of chairman by the unanimous vote of a board which, in its political outlook, is predominantly non-Labour, but has confidence in his impartiality and administrative ability. It is not the presence of such men on public bodies that is protested, but the manner of their appointment. Local body government is the form of government in closest touch with the people, and a wholly democratic basis of representation must be given it. In no other form will it survive to act as a buffer between the people and a central Government in the capital.