THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23, 1927 “AN IMPROVED OUTLOOK”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 23 November 1927, Page 4

THE H.B. TRIBUNE WEDNESDAY, NOV. 23, 1927 “AN IMPROVED OUTLOOK”

JJNDER the above heading our Napier evening contemporary appeals for “unity of action on the basis of the recent report of the Royal Commission” that sat —sat most rudely, it may be said —on the Napier Harbour Board. The first pertinent question that this suggests is to ask in what direction united action is to be taken if we are to lie down under the Commission’s recommendations. So far as providing the provincial district and the East Coast generally with an adequate harbour and port, which is the main point at issue, we have been told that we are to do nothing for the next ten or fifteen years, during which Welling-ton-’will, of course, be extra busy gathering in all possible of our overseas shipping trade. Accepting this, the only united action that seems open for us is to take our little stools, gather round the Minister like children at an infant school, and raise our little voices in a psalm of thanksgiving at having been relieved from all responsibility with regard to the future of one of the finest big productive areas in the Dominion. If that is the idea of the Napier paper, then it is to be most sincerely hoped that the “unity of action” for which it professes to pray will not come about. No other of the lesser harbour districts of the Dominion has been asked to sit down under any such indignity, and there is no reason why Hawke’s Bay should, no matter what the faction apparently dominant in Napier for the time being may be prepared to do. As a matter of fact, the Napier paper finds itself very much in the position of the fox who had lost his fine bushy tail in a trap—in its case one most cunningly and ungratefully set for it by its friends of the Marine Department. It is now busy trying to make us all believe what a fine light, airy feeling it gives to be rid of so useless and even cumbersome an appendage. Effectively tongue-tied by its premature pledge to abide by the Commission’s findings, it is unable to raise any note of protest against them, even where they are most manifestly adverse to the interests not only of the district as a whole, but of its own town in particular. It now asks that no one else should take exception to the dictation that has been handed out to us. Fortunately, however, the “Tribune,” with some little fore-knowledge of the ways and tendencies of ministerially appointed commissions, and of the influences at work, reserved its right to criticise the proceedings and conclusions of this one, and that right it means to exercise fully in due course. In the meantime the stump of the fox’s tail is as yet over raw and bleeding for any great notice to be taken of praise for the trap that nipped off the rest of it. Further than this we would not wish to rub anything in that would cause additional and unnecessary pain. Our contemporary would have its readers believe that the bill which is now before the House, giving gracious permission to do some little tinkering with existing harbour works and effect some small measure of land reclama-

tion entirely and ungrudgingly for Napier's benefit, is the result of a compromise between the Marine Department and the Board. Unless we are greatly mistaken, it is nothing of the kind, that is, if a compromise means something to which both parties willingly subscribe. On the face of it, it obviously embodies the most in the way of concession upon what an arbitrary intention sought to im* pose. As for its being an indication of “support of the general conclusions of the Commission,” that is only true so far as the support comes from the Marine Department. Though formally sponsored by the Member for Napier, it is essentially the offspring of the departmental heads, subject only to some slight modifications secured by the Board only with very considerable difficulty. The responsibility for it, therefore, lies entirely with the Department, and through it with the Department’s ministsrial head. The Napier paper congratulates the ratepayers on the bill as “proposing to spare their pockets,” though in what way it prudently abstains from attempting to show. Perhaps it may have the same to say when; as is not at all unlikely, the Department at tempts by further legislation to take out of these pockets some three or four thousand pounds to pay for the Department’s lavish expenditure incurred with a view to justifying a hastily composed report of its engineering chief.