Veiled Hints on Arapuni Works

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 137, 31 August 1927, Page 1

Veiled Hints on Arapuni Works

MR. PARRY IS CRYPTIC CONTRACT SYSTEM ASSAILED

| (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Tuesday. WHAT does Mr. W. E. Parry, ▼ ▼ member for Auckland Central, know about the causes underlying the trouble at Arapuni hydro-elec-tric works? He says that he knows a lot but refused to disclose what he knew to the House of Representatives to-night, when he informed members that everything in the garden at the Northern construction works was not lovely. | Litigation was pending, he said, and i there was quite a lot of uneasiness so far as the Government was concerned, and the people of New Zealand also ! were manifesting concern. “I know something of what is at the bottom of it,” he went on. “I am i not going to mention it here to-night ! because it might not help the Government in what might happen in the future.” The Hon. A. D. McLeod: Say it. Mr. Parry: If the Minister wants to force me I will say it, but I do not want to discuss it here. It would have been better if the Government had left this to our own people. These half-veiled disclosures were made by Mr. Parry during his strenuous advocacy of the co-operative s> stem in tunnelling work on various big jobs in the Dominion. The Government proposed to call tenders outsidt New Zealand for a tunnel on the Tawa Flat deviation, but he believed that experience should have taught the authorities the efficacy of the co-opera-

tive system on these jobs. BEST MINERS IN THE WORLD There were men in the Dominion to do the work well, and. on the authority of the superintendent of the "W aihi mine, this country was reputed to possess the best miners in the world. The tunnelling at Springfield, on the Midland Railway, where not a single man was killed, was cited as an example of the success of the co-opera-tive system. On the other hand the Otira tunnel had been let to a contractor on a five-year contract, but the Government had to realise on its bonds and take over the work itself, occupying nearly 18 years in completion. Lake Coleridge similarly had been muddled with till the Government had to take charge. The Orongorongo tunnel was an expressive illustration of co-operative working, two miles ha\ - ing been tunnelled in two years, a record for Australia and New Zealand. Mr. Parry undertook to get, within 24 hours, sufficient capable men to accept a co-operative contract for Tawa Flat. In face of this guarantee he sawno reason for the Government to go i outside the Dominion.