CORPORATIONS BILL

Hokitika Guardian, 10 December 1932, Page 6

CORPORATIONS BILL

A CRITICAL OPINION. In the House of Representatives on Tuesday a determined attack was made on those clauses in the( Municipal. Corporations Rill which empower the Governor-General to amalgamate boroughs or alter borough boundaries, provided that in each case the step lias been recommended by a Commission. Several members criticised th.se provisions, and similar provisions in the Hospitals and Charitable Institutions Act Amendment Bill, as “undemocratic,” as trenching unduly on tne rights of local bodies,' and as. likely to encourage bureaucratic tendencies. ~;in Government; and the member for Rii;earton, who has a special interest in the Rill, even threatened to divide tile House ou the issue. ~

Though the Minister in charge of the Bill had no difficulty in exposing the weakness of these arguments in the early stages of the debate, lie ended by yielding tamely to noisy and illogical protests and agreed to hold the measure over until January. There is little consolation in liis statement that the Bill will probably be proceeded with in the latter half, of the session, comments the Christchurch Press, for obviously the chances -are now fe vily against its being passed. The timidity of the Government and the. destructive and parochial attitude of a section of the House seem to have shipwrecked what promised to he a most useful reform'. Indeed, the criticism * which ought to be directed against the controversial part of the Rill is that it does not go far enough in restricting the rights of local bodies where amalgamations or boundary alterations are concerned.

The appointment of Commission's to investigate such cases should be obligatory and not, as in the Bill, optional. The opposition to the procedure which the Bill proposes to establish is based on a wrong concept on of the relations which should exist between local bodies and the central government. It can be admitted that, in up local bodies, the central government should endow them with reasonably wide powers and allow them reasonable discretion in the use of those powers. But it must he emphasised that the central government alone is responsible for devising the framework cf local government and should retain power to allow or disallow any alterations to that framework.

In the past the Government of New Zealand has failed' to ' exercise this power; with the result that the system of local government has developed without any plan, has lost all vestiges of symmetry, and has become a confused tangle of areas and functions. Experience here, as in England, has shown that the will of the ratepayers ic:. npt a ) .^ffiqiept i ,guj ) de to, the,., .filing of loeal body boundaries. „ A local government area should, as far as passible, be the area .which one local body can serve efficiently and cheaply; and its boundaries can bo discovered only by a Commission of experts. In judging such issues ratepayers are too often blinded by local jealousies and prejudices and too often .attach undue importance to the immediate effect an amalgamation or boundary alteration is likely to have on their rating burden. It is' futile* to argue that ratepayers should retain the right to alter boundaries merely because it is “democracy.” If that is democracy, local government in New Zealand has had surfeit of it.