FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 128, 20 August 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN”

PAPER MANUFACTURER The news that the Commonwealth Council of Scientific Research has discovered a process by which newsprint may he produced in Australia at a price sufficiently low to compete with the imported material should stimulate research along similar lines in this country. There are over 300 newspapers in New Zealand, and they gobble up a tremendous quantity of newsprint. Last year, apart from stationery valued at £900,000, over "'£1,000,000 worth of paper was imported. It is hoped that the £2,000,000 a year sent out of Australia for newsprint will eventually be retained in that country. What about trying to keep in New Zealand the million a year we spend? A CUE FOR N.Z. New Zealand officialdom now has cause for a real vexation. It submits all passengers who laud here to an exhaustive questionnaire as to their birth, ancestry, age, business, motives, predelictions, disabilities and dislikes, and insists upon them taking oaths of allegiance; but it has been left to Australian initiative to devise further tortuous formalities for new arrivals. In future, passengers arriving in the Commonwealth will have to make a written declaration to the Customs, setting out all the articles in their effects which are intended for gifts, sale, exchange or barter, or which are not their bona-fide effects. How New Zealand officialdom will kick itself for not having thought of something like this years ago, to lend added interest to the process of disembarkation! However, better late than never. There need be little doubt but that the action of the Commonwealth will be emulated, and it may be expected that in the near future passengers to Auckland will have six hours instead of three to enjoy the view of the city from the harbour, before being landed, after their ship has rounded North Head. GET OUT! The anticipatory joys of yachtsmen preparing for the coming sailing season have been dampened by the ukase of the Harbour Board. The aquatic sports have been using the Beaumont Street foreshore since they were expelled from Freeman’s Bay after the completion of the reclamation area there. Now it’s “Get out!” from Beaumont Street, for that insatiable hunger of the board’s coffers has to be further appeased (they will need filling in preparation for the reclaiming of Hobson’s Bay), and the land is to be auctioned for building leases. A site at Mechanic’s Bay has been promised the yachtsmen, hut most of the boatowners live in the vicinity of St. Mary’s Bay and they will be greatly inconvenienced by the change. Auckland’s launch and yacht fleets contribute much to the charm of the harbour; and it is up to the Harbour Board to provide a boat harbour and hauling-up area which will be a permanent sanctuary, summer and winter, and not merely to grant a site on sufferance, and without tenure, from which yachtsmen may be evicted at inconveniently short notice.