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Poverty Bay Standard, Volume I, Issue 90, 20 March 1884, Page 2

At the Harbor Board meeting on Tuesday night Member Joyce took exception to the manner in which certain correspondence of the Board had been published prior to coming before the meeting. He was asked to particularise any such breach of trust, and mentioned some four instances which had attracted his. attention —to wit, the communication from the Minister of Public Works re the bridgte grant, which he stated had been published on the 4th February and not read at the Board until the evening of the Sth February. Then, again, the Land Company’s letter re the Waimata bridge, and again the notification re the Harbor Board grants, and finally Mr. DeLautour’s letter to Captain Porter and W. K. Chambers re the Harbor Bill. Now, as we are somewhat concerned in this matter, and have a word or two to say on the subject, we will take the above charges seriatim. On Monday, 4th February, our reporter had business with the Secretary, and was in the office late in the afternoon asking for information, hut not a word leaked out as to the grants. Again on Tuesday he attended and copied correspondence, and although the matter referred to had appeared in a contemporary on the previous day no mention was made of the document, and it was not until the same had been read at the Board that we were honored by a glimpse of the (to us) dark document. A short time after this our reporter w’as present when his Worship the Mayor received a telegram, and requested that official to permit him to copy it, with a view of publishing, but it is needless to say that he (the Mayor) refused the request on principle. But, strange to say, the same got into print before coming before the Board in due order, whereupon his Worship’s attention was called to the fact, but no further notice was taken. With respect to the last complaint instanced by Member Joyce, we can only remark upon the peculiarity of a letter addressed to a particular gentleman having been handed to the Press and appearing in public before it had arrived at the Borough Office. Looking at the matter from this point of view we must, on public grounds, confess to a sympathy with Member Joyce. In the first place, if these documents were of such importance to the public as to render it expedient that they should be made public before they were read aud discussed in due course by the Board, why was not the same courtesy extended to our representative as to others ? But we entirely fail to see how or by what means the public are in any way benefitted by knowing the result a few hours in advance, especially at the cost of a breach of trust. For want of space we must, for the present, content ourselves with these few remarks, but will enter more fully into the matter in a future issue. Of course -we all know that the clever and discreet gentleman who appears most concerned in this matter is entirely above those miserable “ little party intrigues and petty miserable littlenesses” which are so prevalent in other quarters, and consequently that no possible blame or rejection can be cast on him by discussing this question, and we are only induced to do so as a duty we owe to our readers.