CHALLENGE TO LABOUR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 624, 28 March 1929, Page 1

CHALLENGE TO LABOUR

BATTLE FOR MAYORALTY PUBLIC DEBATE PROPOSED A challenge to certain Labour members of the Auckland City Council was issued last evening by Cr. W. H. Murray, a candidate for the Mayoralty, who invited them —together with the sitting Mayor —to give a public account of their municipal stewardship. The challenge issued by Cr. Murray developed from his reference to Cr. W. Davis, a Labour member of the Council, xvhose administration Cr. Murray criticised severely. “I xvill tell you what these paragons of Labour are doing,” he promised when a member of the audience asked him what the attitude of Labour members had been toward the rise in the city officials’ salaries last year, and toward the Murray inquiry. “Cr. Davis,” he averred, “supported the motion to keep the public out of the Murray inquiry, and voted for the rise in salaries for the highly-paid city officials. He (Cr. Murray) xvould invite Cr. Davis to an explanation on the platform. “Let him come to a public meeting and give an account of his stexvardship, and allow me to speak at the same meeting,” he challenged. The same invitation xvas extended to the Mayor, Mr. G. Baildon. At question time Cr. Murray xvas asked if he xvould extend his invitation to public debate to Cr. T. Bloodworth, the Labour nominee for the Mayoralty, and to other Labour members of the Council. “I will debate with him anything connected with the Murray charges,” he replied, “but so far as the other questions are concerned, Cr. Bloodworth was not a member of the council at the time, and he cannot know the whole of the facts.” Mr. H. P. Taylor, who was in the body of the hall, asked xvas it not a fact that Cr. Bloodworth, in a controversy on the subject, had positively refused to see the documents relating to the Murray charges. Cr. Murray assured the audience this was perfectly correct, and reiterated his willingness to debate the Murray inquiry at any time.