ACCESS TO SEA.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXIV, Issue 851, 26 August 1933, Page 15

ACCESS TO SEA.

Meeting' of Investigation Committee. PROCEDURE DRAWN UP. After a preliminary meeting of the Access to the Sea Investigation Com. mitee last evening, the following statement was issued by the chairman (Mr W. Machin): — * “ The committee has decided to obtain from the Port and City League and from the Port Christchurch League their considered views with regard to the utilisation of their respective projects as major unemployment relief schemes, and particularly the relationship of the amount of labour to be employed to the cost of materials. These projects will be examined as to their relationship to the affairs of the other bodies, both public and private, after which those bodies will be communicated with as to how they will view the points at which the schemes will touch their affairs. The predominant question is, of course, the provision of relief work; but the important and vital question will be, probably, the question of the provision of the capital expenditure involved, and much will turn on the amount of that expenditure. Matters of Procedure. “ The committee intends to try to get its report out before Christmas because it has in mind that the human side of this problem will demand the provision of relief work at the commencement of next winter. “As to taking evidence, the committee has considered this point and has decided that, in the meantime, it will ask for what it wants. It feels that if it invites indiscriminate evidence it might sit for months, and that the necessity for making a decision within the next few months will preclude indefinite sittings for the purpose of hearing evidence, indefinitely extended. In the meantime we will conduct the committee in private, but we will try to give the newspapers a continuous narrative regarding the various fields that are being explored. We are obtaining from the Lyttelton Harbour Board, and from the two leagues, reports and evidence of previous enquires and commissions and it will be one of the first tasks of the members of the coipniittee to make themselves conversant with the information they contain.”