CLAIMS OF TWO BOROUGHS

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 23968, 8 June 1943, Page 3

CLAIMS OF TWO BOROUGHS

♦ MINISTER’S REPLY TO CRITICISM From Our Own Reporter OAMARU, June 7. Stating that the Mayor of Oamaru (Mr J, C. Kirkness) “has blundered badly,” the Hon. A. H. Nordmeyer, M.P., .for Oamaru, in a statement telephoned from Wellington to-day, explained that the letter to the Timaru Borough Council for which he had been criticised, was merely signed by him for. the Minister of Marketing (the Hon. J. G. Barclay), and was not his (Mr Nordmeyer’s) letter. At the monthly meeting of the borough council last week, it was stated that Mr Nordmeyer had discouraged Oamaru and encouraged Timaru regarding new industries, and particularly on the question of a vegetable dehydration plant, and the council decided to ask the Minister what he proposed to do for his own town. The Minister’s reply is as follows; “My attention has been drawn to a newspaper report of the last monthly meeting of the Oamaru Borough Council, in which I am taken to task allegedly for encouraging Timaru’s claims for a vegetable dehydration plant. “His Worship has blundered badly. The letter which he quotes was dictated by the Hon. J. G. Barclay, as Minister of Marketing, before he left Wellington. He arranged for me to sign this and other letters for him. These letters were signed by me and clearly marked ‘for the Minister of Marketing.’ The communication to Timaru is Mr Barclay’s, not mine. “His Worship was in my office in Wellington last week. If he had mentioned the matter to me, it would have saved him, no doubt inadvertently, from misleading the borough council.” “I may say,” concluded the Minister, “that I have frequently pressed the claims of Oamaru for one of the vegetable dehydration plants, and the Minister concerned has promised that Oamaru’s claims will not be overlooked. No decision has yet been reached concerning the location of any plant—a fact which will surely be obvious to any discerning reader of Mr Barclay’s letter.”