Dear Sir,

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 82, 5 June 1946, Page 4

Dear Sir,

Letters to the Editor must be clearly written on one side of the paper only and where a nom-de-plume is used the name of the writer must be included forreference purposes. The Editorreserves the right to amend or withhold any letter or letters.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT Sir, —One of the last remaining factors of Freedom is to be attacked: I am referring to the Local Bodies Amendment Bill. These totalitarians talk about “progress” but in reality they are so reactionary that they are trying to force us back to the system of Government we had in this country when it was pioneered i.e., central control. Our forefathers with their sturdy realism of independent local government were not content to be governed by a central .Bureaucracy. They demanded the right to govern themselves. Highly centralised governments can never be as effectively controlled by the electors as can local governments. It is only in local government; government on the spot, that electors can maintain an effective check on political representatives. But the real issue can be stated thus: Are the electors to control their own affairs by insisting on decentralised, local and responsible government or are they to be merely “mass” planned and regimented by power-lusting Bureaucrats, dominating from the centre of Government? Yours etc., ‘RATEPAYER.’