“WILL NOT BE BOUNCED”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 282, 18 February 1928, Page 1

“WILL NOT BE BOUNCED”

COUNCILLOR MURRAY’S ULTIMATUM CITY COUNCIL MUST FOOT THE BILL TTNLESS the City Council undertakes to pay the cost of U the proponed judicial inquiry into the charges of civic and engineering waste, Councillor Murray will not be a party to the commission.

rPHIS information was conveyed in the following letter addressed to the editor of The Sun this morning. The letter reads:— Sir,—

Having returned after a ten-days’ absence from the city I have had the opportunity of perusing the council’s attitude toward myself as an individual councillor. Just prior to Christmas the committee, adjourned, to resume the taking of evidence on January 20. On January 19, Mr. Chairman Dempsey, without any intimation to me personally, and without any direction from the committee as such, suggested in writing to the town clerk the suspension that evening by the council of the sittings of the investigation committee which was to have resumed on the morrow, and that the Government be asked to set up a judicial commission. That suggestion, unanimously adopted by the council, has prevented

the recording ot the balance ot the evidence available more fully to justify my utterances on the floor of the justify before that very committee. Having effected that “hold up’’ the council, through its solicitor, now invites me to execute a chameleon somersault from the position of an accused councillor to that of a judicial accuser. In the same breath, I am coolly invited to foot the bill which must be incurred by the council if it indulges on its own account in an expensive judicial commission. X am not going to be bounced by empty threats and I have no intention whatever of contributing to any solicitor other than my own. In regard to the proposed judicial commission, my veto is absolute and final against any participation in it as a party unless and until the Auckland City Council in a binding document undertakes to defray the whole of the costs of its proposed judicial excursion to which apparently it does not desire the public to be admitted, W. H. MURRAY.