THE TRANSPORT BILL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 233, 2 October 1928, Page 6

THE TRANSPORT BILL.

The report of the Transport Commission was issued in the closing days of July, and now, in the first week in October, the resultant Bill is before a House that is impatient to get awav to the constituencies. The intervening period could easily have been reduced by half, and the Bill given by Parliament the careful and unhurried attention it deserves. For this delay the City Council is wholly, or almost wholly, responsible. As things are, what with differences of opinion between the city and the suburbs, the objections of Auckland members to certain provisions, and the impossibility of passing such a Bill if local members oppose it, the measure is in danger of being rejected, the consequences of which to Auckland would be serious. Fortunately the spirit of compromise has begun to work. The City Council must realise by this time that if the Bill is to pass it cannot maintain its rigid insistence on its own terms. There are one or two main features against which criticism is directed with particular force. One is the provision that the members first appointed to the Board shall be elected by the local bodies for periods of three and six years. The fact that this follows the recommendations of the Transport Commission does not, we are sure, commend it to public opinion. It is felt that after the next municipal elections the personnel of the City Council and the other local bodies concerned may be very different from what it is now, and that it would not be right to give these bodies the right to nominate some of their own present members for so long a term of office on the new Board. Only reasonableness can save the Bill now, and it behoves all parties to bring this spirit to bear on the problem.