H.—l4

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acquainted with local requirements as they ought to do. The present system of local government, especially in connection with the town districts and road districts, had done excellent work in the past, and was sufficient for the requirements of the present day. To abolish these districts would be a mistake, in his opinion. In the district he represented theie were no less than five town districts. Only one of these was independent. The others were subject to the county, and also to the ratepayers. It should be a condition that subsidies granted to local bodies should be spent only in making permanent improvements, such as metalling roads and making culverts. In the county he came from there was not a road that one could call a permanent road. He did not advocate the cessation of subsidies, but if his suggestion were adopted finality would be secured; the local bodies would know that in the course of time they would not be subsidized, because there would be few or no permanent improvements to be effected. He was not a member of a Hospital Board; but he thought the Minister's statement that morning showed that the Act of 1909 required further consideration. The Hospital Boards had done excellent work. They were composed of gentlemen who gave their time for nothing, their actual expenses only being recouped to them, and some of them had to travel from a great distance. To tell these gentlemen, in effect, that their services had not been acceptable to the country was to give them a severe slap in the face. As to the Provincial Councils appointing members of Committees from outside of their own number, the Minister had stated that persons who were not on the local bodies but had the required knowledge and possessed public spirit should be asked to devote a certain amount of their time to local affairs. In his (Mr. Fisher's) opinion, if gentlemen having such knowledge and public spirit asked the electors for their suffrages, they would not be found outside the local bodies. As to education, after the Hon. Mr. Mackenzie's statement that morning ii was, ap parently, not seriously intended to interfere with the existing system. It might be that some things required to be amended, but the present bodies had done excellent work. As a country member of the Auckland Harbour Board, he indorsed what Mr. Garland had said about the Auckland Harbour. It would be a great pity to place its control in different hands than the Board as at present constituted. Mr. J. Trevor (Chairman of the Wellington Hospital Board) was in entire accord with Mr. Panin some of the statements he had made and some of the facts he had adduced. He would like to know whether there was a possibility of removing the cities from the scope of the Bill. The larger cities, at any rate, should not be brought under the Provincial Councils : to his mind, it would be a retrograde step. Two sets of officers in connection with the local Councils and the Provincial Councils would be more than was needed. With regard to hospital management, he was afraid they would go farther and fare worse under the proposals of the Bill. Hospital management would be very costly if, in the case of Wellington, they took in a district reaching as far as Apiti, and had to bring members from such a distance; he assumed that the work would have to be done from Wellington. There were men on the Hospital Boards who giving, he was going to say, very nearly all their time gratuitously. Two members of the Wellington Hospital Board had attended 143 meetings during the last year; so they had not shirked their responsibilities. There were also other members who gave a very large amount of their time to hospital and charitable-aid work. In Wellington, and, he presumed, in the other centres also, there were distinct committees to work the three branches of the Act, and they did good work; and, in his opinion, if they deviated from that, they would do no better. The new scheme, he was afraid, too, would be more costly to carry out. In some small districts, of course, it might be better to amalgamate; but he was referring to the Wellington district, and he considered they had better remain as they were. He desired to make one reference : his friend Mr. Venn was not so very far wrong when he said there was something like £18,000, but he omitted to state the source from which it was obtained. Last year they had the Children's Hospital to build. There were voluntary contributions amounting to something like £8,000, and then there was the Government subsidy, which brought it up to a considerable sum, and as a result Mr. Venn was not far wrong. They were expending money in building every year : for instance, they wanted £10,000 this year foi a pathological establishment. Something like £15,000 had been spent on the Children's Hospital, and there yet remained the construction of a fever ward. Those things were overtaking them in a few months, and consequently at one time a fairly good sum might be in the bank whilst at another time they would be on the verge of bankruptcy. The balance referred to by Mr. Venn was just sufficient to carry them over till the 31st March, when the rates were struck. Mr. J. A. Nash (Mayor of Palmerston North) said it was the duty of the Conference to congratulate the President upon having invited them to Wellington to meet and discuss the proposed Bill. He noted that the President had remarked this morning, with a certain amount of bashfulness, that the Conference constituted the brains of the Dominion, and in that connection he wondered whether Parliament was afraid to tackle the Bill which they were there to consider. Speaking of the proposed Provincial Councils, he was of opinion that they were quite unnecessary. There were, of course, some exceptions, but everything generally was going on very well at present. Referring to River Drainage Boards, Town Boards, Fire Boards, and some of the smaller Harbour Boards, he was a member of a Harbour Board for nine months which was quite unable to pay its delegates their travelling-expenses, and it would be a good thing if the small Boards which he had enumerated were taken over by the Borough, the City, or the County Council concerned. A matter which had appealed to him very much in connection with the Conference was in respect to the Hospital Boards. He was of opinion that those Boards should be left just as they were. He did not think there should be any change in that respect. They had been told by Dr. Valintine that at Palmerston North there had been too much overlapping going on, and he was sure they were all very much amused when the representative of the Waikato that afternoon had told them how the doctor had put Rotorua on to their county. The doctor, so far as