Mr. Fisher’s Charges.

Opunake Times, Volume XXII, Issue 768, 29 August 1905, Page 2

Mr. Fisher’s Charges.

Wellington, Ausust 26. In the House during the afternoon the expectation was to have the report of the Auditor-General in re Fisher and the officers of the Hmse. The approaches were full at a very early hour, and there was muoh jostling in the presence of the decorous orderlies to get into position, but great was the disappointment when it became known that there would not be any report. That in fact the investigation was not completed. At the same time it is understood to be a fact that the Auditor-General has made up his mind that there is no such voucher as the Fisher party demanded, and that Captain Seddon never got any payments of the kind mentioned in the charges of the Fisher party. With reference to “ that voucher not the exploded one, but the second —which Mr Fisher and his friends asserted to be in existence, showing a payment to Captain Seddon, the Parliamentary correspondent of the Lyttelton Times advanced in Thursday’s issue of his journal a probable solution of the mystery surrounding it. By a series of enquiries among persona believed to be in the confidence of the New Liberals, he reached the conclusion that the searchers had bit upon another voucher signed by the now famous Mr Sneddon. The name was there as plain as it was in the first voucher, and looking, as it did in the first voucher, to the casual observer curiously like “ Richard Seddon. ” The amount, too, was between £7O and £80 —£74 to be precise—and the date was very close to the date suggested by Mr Fisher and his friends. The reluctant informant would not say whether the payment was for reorganising stores at Auckland or anywhere else, or whether it was charged to the defence vote. 41 1 don’t know, and I don’t care, ” was his dismissal of the matter. Further enquiries, strengthened by the information already gathered, helped on the correspondent, and he was soon satisfied that there had been a discovery that it was a voucher signed by Richard Sneddon, that the amount was £74, that the date was somewhere in June, and that the New Liberals were not very jubilant over the matter. He got a hint, too, that the next ruse will be to put it about that Mr Willis and bis friends fell into a trap which had been set for them by some practical joker in their office, and that their statements were made in good faith as the outcome of their natural indignation on seeing what they believed to be evidence of a flagrant impropriety.