The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MAY 29. 1929 HALF WAY TO VICTORY

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 675, 29 May 1929, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, MAY 29. 1929 HALF WAY TO VICTORY

COVERED more 'with confusion than glory, a section of the Auckland Oity Council can today survey -with a kind of baffled exultation the sunt total of what it achieved last evening. By a queer legal paradox their secondary position as members of the Transport Board deprived five members of the City Council of their primary rights as councillors. In spite of the dissimulation and evasion practised last evening, the discussion resolved itself into a question of those for or against Mr. J. A. C. Allunt’s retention as a city nominee on the Transport Board. Though liis name may not always appear in the guarded discussions, Mr. Allum is really the centre of the controversy. Accordingly the defection from his support of the five legally gagged councillors, who included the Mayor, paved the way to a clear victory for liis opponents. But it was a queer kind of victory. The confessed object ol Messrs. Bloodwortli, Lundon and Murray, as leaders of the present agitation, is to have the Transport Board reconstituted by vote of the people. For the purposes of whatever motives there are behind this ponderous scheming, the gentlemen named have allied themselves with Mr. F. S. Morton, the suburban representative who has made himself a storm centre on the Transport Board. In Mr. Morton’s case, some sort of definite success has been won. He automatically retired from the Transport Board, was formally reappointed, and now intends to resign on the ground of ill-health. Clearly, an extraordinary vacancy is thus created. But when the City Council, as it did last evening, sits down in cold blood and solemnly recalls its six representatives, the vacancy is not “extraordinary” at all. The machinery for filling such vacancies was created by Act of Parliament, .and it must be used. The City Solicitor interprets the situation to be a plain case for formal reappointment, with no prescription at all for appeal to the people. In view of the hapjpy reception accorded the transport loan, of which Mr. Allum was the active sponsor, it is by no means clear that an appeal to the people on his behalf would not result in bis return by a triumphant majority; but the possibility of this is blocked at the outset by Mr. Stanton’s ruling. The victory of Mr. Bloodwortli and Ins friends is therefore failure as well as victory. There can be no appeal to the' people until 1931. The pretentious stratagems have collapsed mid-way, and the helplessness of the tacticians in the face of the dramatic legal ruling echoes the hoary dictum that the shoemaker should stick to his last. Mr. Bloodwortli has uot, of course, explored every avenue of his resource. He made a reference to the “courts of the land,’ which seems to suggest that tlpe anti-Allum faction is prepared to carry its hostility even further than it has gone: Almost in the same breath, however, Mr. Bloodwortli referred in his perplexity to “the fo-lly of the whole business,” an instance of penetrating insight which may restore this usually balanced administrator to a reasonable perception of his responsibilities. The situation demands an examination of the purposes that may he served by reappointing the present city nominees. Upon their appointment, the view was expressed here that their prospects of success were good as long as they kept their perceptions unclouded by the characteristic City Council view of the past, years. That much they have done. They have worked in the interests of the transport district as a whole, and no authentic challenge to the contrary lias been cited. Just at present the hoard has a large responsibility, the execution of the loan proposals endorsed so handsomely by the people a few Weeks ago. Had the people been so fervently hostile todhe present board as its detractors suppose, they would scarcely have given the loan such a cordial majority. Mr. Allum, of course, is no longer a member of the City Council, but if the council rejects him on this ground it will lose a man with good grasp both of detail and the general situation: and there is certainly no case for the engagingoutlook of Councillor IT. P. Burton, who seems to regard the Transport Board as a sub-committee of the City Council.

How things will go tomorrow evening is in the lap of the gods and one or two “swingers” among the council. Prominent councillors such as Messrs. Bloodwortli and Hutchison have modestly disclaimed any desire to serve on the Transport Board, but this resolution is doubtless not so ironclad as it may seem.