GOVERNMENT OFFICES

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 216, 1 December 1927, Page 13

GOVERNMENT OFFICES

ANCIENT BUILDINGS TO GO SOME DAY CENTRALISATION SCHEME (THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) • WELLINGTON, Wednesday. There is a scheme among Government files for the complete rebuilding of Government offices in Wellington, and when this is executed at a cost of something like £250,000 of money, the old Government buildings, which now enjoy the reputation of being one of the largest wooden buildings in the world, will disappear, and give place to a modern structure with four spacious wings and a well in the centre.

It is not considered time for the old building to be demolished, and .it is economy—described by one member as the new religion of the Government —that prevents the execution of the centralisation project. Just who inaugurated the scheme appears doubtful. Mr. Coates says tha + it is bis. Sir Joseph Ward said that be suggested it in 1911, but while these two argued it out—one relying upon the glory of the political past and the other content to bask in vivid lustre of the happy present—full galleries waited for the continuation of the Licensing Bill. Mr. Coates said that he would look up the estimates and plans, but the House thought the State was not justified in going ahead with it at the present. Mr. R. McKeen, Wellington South, who raised the question, said that thousands of pounds- that were being paid to. private owners would provide for a scheme of centralised Government offices.