FOXTON HARBOUR BOARD.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 453, 30 March 1909, Page 2

FOXTON HARBOUR BOARD.

All the members of the Foxton Harbour Board, excepting the Feildiug representative, were present at yesterday’s meeting. It would be difficult to find a governing body more representative and possessing such wide experience in public affairs as the members constituting the Foxton Harbour Board. Included on the Board are two exM.P.’s, viz., Messrs W. Wood (Government appointee) and J. G. Wilson (chairman ManawUtu County Council). Mr J. A. Nash, another member, is Mayor of one of the leading provincial towns in the Dominion, and the other members are : Mayor Gardener ol Devin, Mayor Gower of Foxton, Cr Tolley (Feildiug Borough Council) and Mr P. J. Hennessy the founder of the Board. If the collective intelligence of these gentlemen cannot convert the port of Mauawalu into the most important shipping centre between Wellington and Onehunga, then we are satisfied that no successive Board can accomplish the feat. The personnel could not, in our opinion be improved upon. They realise the stupendous task that devolves upon them, and will be occupied for some time in setting their house in order attending to the little things. Then will come the Board’s policy. At present the Board is a Board in name only with barely sufficient revenue to pay the services of a pilot, and to buoy the river, and sound the bar. The railway appropriates the. profits and gives nothing in return. If this were the only work to be undertaken, there would be no necessity to call a Board into existence; the Marine Department could continue to pilot the steamers to the wharf, and the Railway Department could continue its iniquitous policy of seizing the wharfage dues and transferring them to the credit of the working railways. The past history of the port shows that a wharf was constructed many years jj ago by the Public Works Depart- jj ment. A Board was constituted,•, but iu those early days its members did not seem to realise that they had authority to collect wharfages, and seeing no prospect of obtaining revenue, refused to undertake financial responsibili-

ties. We doubt whether more than oue meeting of the original Board was held. Subsequently the Board, together with other socalled Boards, was dissolved by Act of Parliament. The Act of dissolution, however, provided that surplus revenues accruing from Boards so dissolved, were to be held in trust and expended for the improvement of the harbours from whence they were obtained. The Railway Department has always, collected the wharfages from the local port. By what authority we do not know, but instead of surplus revenue having been set aside from 1876 to 1894 for the purpose of improving the port,, it was absorbed by the railways. The profits that have accrued from the wharf, and so absorbed, total thousands of pounds—yet nothing has been spent by the Railway Department on improving the port. The Government’s argument about those locally interested not having taken over their responsibilities in the past, as an excuse for not handing over the wharfages, is beside the point, lor whatever the Government has done in the past, it has been handsomely recuperated. In withholding the wharfages from the Board, the Government is perpetuating a most iniquitous principle, and it is for the new Board to demand the wharfages, without which its future policy is hopeless. To compromise with the Government by accepting a grant ol /1000 or a year would bo suicidal. We believe the Board will show a united front on this question, and demand the wharfages or nothing. The present Government cannot be blamed for the existing stale of things but we feel sure when the whole position is unfolded before Cabinet they will see the justice of the demand and will not hesitate to do the straight thing by the Board. To compromise by accepting a yearly grant would alter the whole complexion of the "Board’s future policy and kill the objects for which the Board was brought into existence.