The Press THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1954. Lyttelton Harbour Development

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27396, 8 July 1954, Page 10

The Press THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1954. Lyttelton Harbour Development

The decision of the Lyttelton Harbour Board to go ahead with its port development plan is encouraging; and' even more encouraging is the evidence, from yesterday’s meeting of the board, of the large | measure of agreement among ■ members upon the necessity and the wisdom of this course. When allowance is made for the absence of two . country members who are known to ■ be opposed to the plan, the record- [ ing of only a single dissentient vote against the scheme is a far better outcome than could have been expected by anyone who has followed in the last few years the board’s painful progress toward a progressive and coherent policy. Because the arrest of decline and decay at Lyttelton is dependent, in the long run, on the willingness of the people of Canterbury to help pay for a modern port served by modem transport and capable of accommodating modem ships, it is important that the board should not only have a development policy but should have its heart in it. Members of the board will have first to convince Parliament of the need, and afterwards the ratepayers; and while the former will no doubt be well satisfied with the abundant evidence that has come from numerous technical investigations over a long period of years, the latter will require something more. The ratepayers and the public generally will want to be shown j how the efficiency or the inefficiency I of a port affects for good or ill the | corporate life of the community and ' of everyone in the community, however indirectly. This is by no means I as self-evident as some may assume; and it is not proved conclusively by the examples of other harbour authorities, in New Zealand and elsewhere, which accept without question the need to keep up to date, I whatever the cost, their facilities for handling ships and cargo. The contrary view of Mr P. J. Mowat, I the one dissentient from yesterday’s i important decision, will have its attractions for the short-sighted and the parsimonious. He had yet to

learn of any serious hold-up in taking goods from Ltfdtelton, said Mr Mowat; and he thought there could be no assurance that an enlarged port would attract additional shipping. But delays do occur constantly. Each may be small in itself; in sum, they are a substantial additional charge upon commerce

and industry, upon the importers of goods and the exporters of produce; and in the end the public pay for them, as they pay for the support of the railway monopoly and the exclusion of efficient motor transport from the wharves. These things can be made plain and they must be made. plain to the public if the eventual loan poll on the £3,500,000 i project is not to suffer the fate many [ another worth-while project has [suffered for lack of adequate and intelligent explanation to those who must foot the bill.

One very encouraging fact to emerge from yesterday’s meeting was the substantial agreement of the shipping companies on the suitability of the harbour plans. The new berths that are proposed, together with goods sheds and other facilities, in the harbour extension east of the Gladstone Pier, seemed, on the sketch plans submitted to the previous meeting of the board, somewhat exposed; and the prejudice of master mariners against berths open to the weather might not easily be overcome even by the

, most favourable reports from the hydraulic experts in England who have tested the harbour plans in model form. But it seems that the objections of the shipping companies, such as they are, will be met readily, although at some extra cost, by an extension of the new mole or a wider dredged area, or both. At the annual meeting of the Canterbury Progress League yesterday Mr W. S. Mac Gibbon, whose belief in the future of Lyttelton as a modem port has never wavered, declared that the board’s decision had, after many years, removed the cause of complaint that the board had no policy and did not know where it was going. The complaint, unfortunately, was well justified. Mr Mac Gibbon’s claim will be vindicated only by the speed and vigour with which the Lyttelton Harbour Board pursues its policy.