CITY HAS NO CONTROL OVER HOBSON BAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 114, 4 August 1927, Page 15

CITY HAS NO CONTROL OVER HOBSON BAY

A LEGAL ANOMALY QUESTION IN HOUSE (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Wednesday. THE Government is in communication with the Auckland Harbour Board oyer a proposal of the board to reclaim an area at Hobson Bay for industrial purposes. The Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. R. F. Bollard, stated in reply to Mr. J. A. Lee in the House that the Town-planning Act does, generally speaking, give jurisdiction to local bodies over lands reclaimed by harbour boards, seeing that all lands must necessarily be included in a local governing district. " In consequence of a provision contained in the Auckland Harbour Board Empowering A 1926,” he said, “certain lands were excluded from the City of Auckland and included within the Auckland Harbour. The effect of this special legislation creates an entirely new position in that the lands are not subject to the control of any local authority and persons residing in the locality would in all probability find themselves disfranchised as far as local bodies are concerned. “It will thus be seen that it is not the Town-planning Act, but the Auckland Harbour Board Empowering Act, which should be amended in order to correct the anomaly referred to by the honourable member. The Government is in communication with the harbour board in the matter.” INSUFFICIENT POWERS Mr. J. A. Lee said if the City Council did not possess sufficient powers at present to deni with such a position, an amendment to the Town-planning Act might rectify the anomaly. It was hardly fair that a local authority that had taken great trouble and gone to great expense to create one of the finest residential areas in New Zealand should have no control whatever over a harbour board which created an adjacent industrial area. There had been a great deal of excitement in Auckland over the matter and he wished to see a remedy effected.