THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1922. IN BAD TASTE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4388, 10 March 1922, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette. With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. FRIDAY, MARCH 10, 1922. IN BAD TASTE.

— Mr Cooper said that one bfi the commissioners should not. have had a seat. Mr G. Buchanan was really an interested party, as he held land in part of the district affected. He was surprised that Mr Buchanan had accepted appointment’. The above paragraph is an extract from the report of the Thames Harbour Board’s meeting, held last during which criticism or the personnel of the 1921 Waihou and Ohinemuri River Commission was made. Admitting that the Public Works Department’s estimate of the work is excessive ; in fact, a “staggerer,” there is now no justification'for objection to the personnel of the Commission. The Harbour Board or any other local body had three clear months in which to take exception to the personnel of the Commission ; having failed to do so in that period, it is in extremely bad taste to do so. now. Had the Commission’s finding been to the liking of the Harbour Board nothing would have been heard of the gentlemen composing the tribunal —except praise I Our Thames contemporary backs up Mr Cooper’s remarks, as follows: One so directly interested in ? the actual i§§jps before the Commission must have been in a very difficult, if not impossible, posi- - t.ion, when it game to a matter of a judicial decision. If we remember aright, counsel characterised some of Mr Buchanan's statements as evidence, and evinced a desire to examine him. ; . We should have regarded any shareholder in any mining* company barred . . . To give him his dues, the journalist who wrote the Thames “Star” article is a gentleman of wide culture, long experience, no mean skill with the pen, considerable. intellectual capacity, and of a chivalrous nature. But, as admitted in the article, he was making a reference from memory. which it is often incumbent on one to do in the haste of modern journalism. If, however, our contemporary will find the time to refer to the official stenographer’s report of the proceedings, it will be noted that Mr Buchanan was rightly testing the accuracy of statements and deductions made by the witness then being examined. It is also apparent that our contemporary has not the advantage of knowing what steps preceded the choosing of the members of the Commissioji. The Government asked the Thames Valley Drainage Reference Board (on which the Thames district Was represented) to nominate two of the members. The mining interests nominated Mr H. J. H. Blow, late Under-Secretary of the .Public Works Department, and this gentleman” was appointed chairman', so that the mining- companies were exceptionally well represented. Mr Geo. Buchanan and two others were nominated for the farming interests. Mr Buchanan, who was chairman of the old Thames Valley Co-operative Dairying Co., Ltd., and is a member of the directorate of the Amalgamation (N.Z. Co-operative Dairy Co., Ltd.), was chosen out of the three. It would have been an impossibility to have secured a man having so wide and intimate a knowledge of the district to sit on the Commission and who had yet no stake in the district. No outsider could have had the necessary qualifications. To suggest that any member of the Commission was partial and unfair is rather ungenerous. Residents in the district concerned, from Matamata and Morrinsville to Thames, will know how much value to place upon this outside and uninformed newspaper opinion. Referring to the recommendation of the Commission that the

proposed river board should take control of the whole of the Wai-, hou River down to the Firth of Thames, our contemporary comments that the Harbour Board looked for an extension, not a restriction, of its area. This policy might have been feasible and commendable to the district had the Harbour B.oard displayed a little "statesmanship,” shall we say ? But the Harbour Board’s chief expert witness before the Harbour Commission (Mr E. F. Adams, C.E.) coolly gave it out. that his Board looked on the Waihou River as a future “bargewav” to feed the harbour. Naturally, the residents of the Thames Valley want the fiver to be navigable for larger craft than barges, and the cold attitude of the Harbour Board towards the district’s desires effectively killed any possibility of agreement to an extension of the ,Board’s area. (Incidentally, the settlers on the Hauraki Plains may well take warning in time, and not allow the Board to secure control of the Piako River wharves.) It is all very well for the Thames Harbour Board to have control of the best revenueproducing portion of the river and let the Valley and the Plains shoulder the burden of keeping the troublesome part navigable, but this policy is all very ill for everyone else. The whole of the river down to Kopu—where men of long experience on the river think the harbour ought to be, or else at Tararu Point, and not on the present mud flat—-should be under the one controlling authority, and since there is now no possibility of the Thames Harbour Board extending, the proposed river board should take the whole length over. But we are dealing mainly XXrith the Rivers Commission. A perusal of the report will shew that the Commission recommended the imposition of charges on shipping freights to help counterbalance the expenditure on the work of improving the navigable qualities of the rivers. It is obvious, therefore, that the whole of the Waihou River, from its mouth to its source, should be under one controlling authority, for otherwise there would be both the proposed river board and the existing Harbour Board levying tolls—an unjust and even impossible condition. By its self-sufficiency and lack of interest in the Valley and Plains as a whole —except where revenue was to be grasped for—the Harbour Board has forfeited its chances of extension, and there will undoubtedly be persistent, combined, and powerful opposition to the Board indefinitely controlling the Waihou River in any part.