MORE SHADOW-SPARRING

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 499, 31 October 1928, Page 8

MORE SHADOW-SPARRING

IT does not require much imagination to infer, from the statements made on behalf of the Marine Department during the last session of Parliament, that there is precious little chance of the Auckland City Council getting departmental support for its latest fantastic decision regarding the Dixieland baths. It is difficult to place upon the decision any other construction than that it was actuated by narrow motives. The chief aim of the majority of the Parks Committee at this stage appears to be to discredit the promoters of the venture. To effect this objective they are countenancing what they must know is the less satisfactory proposition. The Mayor and Cr. Kealy are to be commended for their direct view and candid comments. The Mayor at least emerges from the bathing-pool welter with this much to his credit—that he knows when he is beaten. For the others the best that can be said is that they have a quaint conception of their functions as the representatives of a reasonably broadminded democracy. Since Sir Maui Pomare, the representative of the Marine Department in the Lower House, said that he would not permit any “dog-in-the-manger” attitude of the Auckland City Council to interfere with a well-founded popular demand, it is difficult to see how the council will get any backing from the department; and the department has, after all, the deciding voice. Thus there is another of the long procession of humiliating failures in sight for the council, and though this may not trouble the council, which is possibly hardened to this sort of ignominy by now, it is not particularly pleasant for the public that has the misfortune to he saddled with such administrators. By carrying on the protracted and undignified haggle the Parks Committee no doubt hopes to involve the company in further costly delay. Its success in doing so will presumably afford it infinite satisfaction: but it will not be very satisfactory to a community that realises the value of swimming facilities. Every child taught to swim is a life saved from “the New Zealand death.”