THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1927 MISAPPROPRIATING FUNDS

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 17 November 1927, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1927 MISAPPROPRIATING FUNDS

rpHE Napier evening paper, having pledged itself in advance to accept the Harbour Commission’s findings in their entirety, is evidently trying to make the best of having to swallow the bitter pill the Commission has administered as a check to Breakwater aspirations. So it is that it dares not say anything whatever about the Commission having condemned the Harbour Board to ten or fifteen years of practical inaction so far as the expansion of shipping accommodation is concerned—years that will give Wellington such an assured lead in our oversea shipping trade that it .will probably never be recovered. This, the broad aspect of the case, it therefore has to set aside and devote itself to making the most —for its own town —of the scant concessions which the Commission and the Minister, with his Chief Engineer and Departmental secretary —probably the real powers behind the throne —are prepared to grant. So we have it last night making a great show of applauding the proposals which the Minister put before the Board at its last meeting. These it would have the Board accept without either deliberation or demur, although they involve a complete reversal of the main policy which its members were put there to carry out—that is to provide an adequate harbour and port for the Hawke’s Bay, if not for the whole East Coast district.

In the first place, it may be as well to explain that the Minister, although he had had some five or six weeks in .which to study the Commission’s report, sprang these proposals on the Board in a telegram which was received while the Board was holding its meeting. Not only this, but he demanded the Board’s reply by wire also, although there could be no possible hope of the proposals thus suddenly sprung upon it being intelligently considered in all the many aspects they present. Yet our evening contemporary professes to make a great flurry because a majority of the Board decided that such hurried consideration as could be given to them should be given in committee of the whole. If ever there was a case in which such a course was justified—indeed requisite in order to prevent confusion in the public mind, already quite sufficiently confused—this was it. The Napier paper’s flurry is thus manifestly just that of the cuttlefish stirring up the mud in order to conceal itself, or, to use another metaphor, just a smokescreen to hide its other movements.

One obvious purpose of the Minister’s thus rushing his proposals was to get the Board committed to work that would, in effect, mean a complete abandonment of the Inner Harbour scheme which the majority of them were sent there to carry out. This is really what the “restoration” of the eastern and western moles in their present position would, of course, mean, as one or other of the moles has to be set back considerably in order to provide the

width of entrance that scheme requires. So much for that little plan.

Now we come to the question of diverting from their original purpose — the construction of the Inner Harbour, with incidental land reclamation round it —of the unexpended loan moneys that are actually in the Board’s hands. Some of these the Minister now suggests—probably intends directing—shall be spent, first in work that he hopes will permanently smother the Inner Harbour scheme, next in repair work at the Breakwater, and next in reclamation work that has no relation even to the harbour which the Commission recommends. In short, the Minister means to appropriate, or misappropriate, these loan moneys to objects for which they were never intended.

When these moneys were raised it was under the authority of an Act of Parliament which specified the objects upon which they were to be spent, all being dependent upon the carrying out of the Inner Harbour scheme. It was on this footing also that the necessary assent of the ratepayers was obtained. Furthermore, it was on this footing also that subscriptions to the loan were invited and made. Yet the Minister apparently intends, without consulting either ratepayers or lenders, to apply these moneys to quite other ends. Still, this very distinct breach of faith with each of these two definitely and deeply interested bodies of men—the lenders and those, in the last recourse, responsible for repayment—meets with the cordial approval of the Napier paper. Why? Because the expenditure eminently suits the books of the Breakwater and Little Napier parties.