The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1912. LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LX, Issue 143772, 22 April 1912, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. (DAILY EVENING.) MONDAY, APRIL 22, 1912. LOCAL GOVERNMENT.

On May 21 a conference of representatives of local bodies is to be held in Wellington to consider the Local Government Bill, which was introduced in the last Parliament and subsequently circulated among those most closely interested. The measure contains over four hundred clauses, and deals in a comprehensive way with the whole subject of local government, so it will be recognised that it cannot be effectively deba/ed in a day or two, or even a week or two. Moreover, the delegates who are sent to Wellington will necessarily have to go without any instructions from the local bodies sending them, for there is probably not a single local body which has discussed the Bill, and very few individual members probably have given it much thought. The conference, it is understood, is to consist of about sixty or seventy delegates, and it is suggested that representation shall be fixed on the basis of hospital districts. Thus the Taranaki hospital district will be limited say to two delegates, who will represent the whole of the local bodies, borough councils, county councils, harbour boards, education boards, road boards, hospital hoards, toyn boards, drainage boards, and school committees. Obviously it will be impossible to find two men sufficiently conversant with the working of these bodies, and with the time and ability to effectively criticise the measure to be submitted to the conference. That a new Local Government Act is required is beyond question; it has been demanded for the last twenty years, and promised repeatedly in the Governor’s Speech at the opening of Parliament. But it appears to us that the new measure is of too experimental a nature. What was required was a consolidating measure, which should remedy the proved defects in existing local government law. Instead of that the Minister responsible for this Bill has chosen to commence almost de novo; he proposes to pull down the old structure and build a new one. We fear that this, if it passes into law, will be found as defective as the old laws governing the subject, and that Parliament will he called upon in succeeding sessions to pass many amendments. The conference to be held next month and Parliament itself will, of course, have the opportunity of

amending the Bill ■wherever it is believed that amendments are required, but its defects can only be discovered by actual working under its provisions. It is not to be expected that the delegates to the conference will be able or willing to remain in Wellington long enough to give the Bill the full consideration it'demands, and we are quite sure that Parliament will not, in one session, be able to devote the necessary time to it. But we are inclined to think that the Bill will be condemned at the outset as centralising in too great a the control of local affairs. The first part of it proposes to establish a Local Government Board, consisting of the Minister of Internal Affairs, three permanent heads of departments, and three other persons appointed by the Governor, whose function it will be to exercise certain powers of supervision, control, and administration in matters of local government. Instead of giving the people greater powers of ; self-government, the Bill proposes to restrict these powers, and that is a step in the wrong direction. It is proposed also to revert to something like the old system of provincial government, with provincial councils taking the place of education boards, hospital boards, in some cases harbour boards, and other bodies. It may be doubted whether a provincial council, unless it becomes a paid body, sitting almost continuously, will’ be able to deal with all these matters. The Premier is perhaps pursuing the best possible course in inviting local bodies to send delegates to a conference, if only for the purpose of ascertaining the general feeling as* to the new Bill. But we cannot believe that the conference will seriously undertake to consider the Bill clause by clause and endeavour to make a workable measure of it. The delegates will have to go with a free hand, for it is impossible at this short notice to get at the views of constituents, even if the latter were agreed as to the merits and faults of the Bill.