ANOTHER NEW ZEALAND DETRACTOR.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2187, 28 February 1881, Page 2

ANOTHER NEW ZEALAND DETRACTOR.

We have, remark* tho “ Daily Times,” bad before to comment on the reckless statement made by the New Zealand correspondent of the “ Australasian Insurance and Banking Record.” The following, in the February number, is another choice specimen : —“ From time to time I have noted the extraordinary extravagance of some of the local harbor boards at Timaru and Dunedin, as also of the various municipal authorities throughout the colony. In their own particular way, these institutions have run far ahead of the colony, as a whole, in point in indebtedness, and the total amounts must be reckoned in millions. The Corporation of Dunedin alone has a debt of £600,000, or £6O for every resident in the town, while the Harbor Beard, with its enormous load, has no property, save a few reserve* to set against it. Bub few municipal bodies dream of making their expenditure bear any proportion to their income.” We do not hesitate to characterise this as a tissue of misrepresentations, To take the one paint alone of the indebtedness of Dunedin, the writer puts the population at 10.000 j it is, in reality, according to the return of boroughs for 1879, 23,959. Moreover, he entirely omits to state that £300,000 of the expenditure out of loan is for water and gas, which are more than self-supporting. We really think some one should make it bis business to point out these errors to the highly respectable and influential journal in which they occur, as they are calculated to damage our credit. The “few reserves ” of the Harbor Board are well known to be worth more than is borrowed on them, to say nothing of harbor duos; and the Timaru Harbor Board is at present in a perfectly easy and sound position, wiihout borrowing, and guilty of no extravagance that wo are aware of.