The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1929 PLAIN TALK ON TRANSPORT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 628, 3 April 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3, 1929 PLAIN TALK ON TRANSPORT

A SUBURBAN member of the Auckland Transport Board has told his constituents that the lot of a representative who spoke his mind was not an enviable one. Most probably not, but it should not he forgotten that there may he circumstances in which the lot of the other representatives who have to listen to the whole mind of a talkative member might he ever so much less enviable. Such an occasion appears to have been experienced at the board’s meeting yesterday when Mr. F. S. Morton, representing Onehunga and adjoining districts, suffered and made others suffer an unenviable lot. Mr. Morton castigated the hoard for what he described as “the inadequate and disgraceful condition” of the Onehunga tram service. He was well within his rights in voicing the complaints of the districts he represents on the hoard, hut in the exercise of those rights and zealous representation of merely a corner of the wide transport field, the indignant man apparently forgot that, as a member, he also must he blamed, if blame be justifiable for any inadequate and disgraceful conditions. Neither Mr. Morton nor any other member of the board has the right to adopt the superior and scornful .attitude of a close neutral observer and speak his mind as though he alone were blameless and without any responsibility for so-called disgraceful transport services. If pronouns must he used freely in the board’s discussions every member should learn to use the right ones, and speak plainly and properly of “we,” “us” and “our,” instead of “you,” “them” and “their.” In the event of proof that Onehunga is being treated inadequately and disgracefully by the board, it is clearly Mr. Morton’s special duty to he content with stating the facts and then devote all his mind to the provision of remedies or better alternatives to existing conditions. It is for that service he happens to he a member of the board at all, and if he renders it with outstanding constructive ability his lot soon would be an enviable one. As for his declaration at Mount Roskill last evening that he had decided to oppose the Transport Board’s proposed loan poll, that alone explains everything and probably will demonstrate later that the lot of the member who speaks his mind will not be an enviable one. Onehunga is not alone in suffering inadequate transport services. It has become a common experience, so much so, indeed, in recent months, that the whole municipal transport system had to be taken out of the feckless hands of the City Council and given to a new board in the hope that brighter intelligence and, more alert initiative might make an end to notorious conditions. So far, Mr. Morton has not sustained. that hope nearer to successful achievement. Several districts with a better claim for adequate transport than Onehunga has ever possessed, have no tramway services at all. Three of these districts—Point Chevalier, Mount Eden and outer Remuera—have been waiting patiently for years for an extension of tram routes to the outward boundaries of their great expansion and in the exercise of patience, have seen the City Council divert authorised loan moneys to less profitable and really ruinous enterprises. One loan so diverted was squandered on buses which merely led to a loss of about £40,000 a year. Unless and until the hoard has received the ratepayers’ authority to borrow £625,000 for essential tram extensions and other improvements the whole service rapidly will become more inadequate and disgraceful than that service about which Mr. Morton has protested so vehemently and selfishly without making any practical effort to improve it. Without the money for reproductive development with the certainty of securing substantial profit the board can do nothing to improve services. It can only talk or listen to aimless talking and allow its transport system to run and rattle itself into financial ruin. The City Council tried silence and secrecy and failed to satisfy the community. It is to be hoped that the board will not fail through talking too much. To-morrow the Local Government Loans Board will consider the Transport Board’s application for authority to seek the ratepayers’ sanction of a developmental loan. There is every reason for anticipating the Loans Board’s approval. Beyond any doubt or dispute, the expansion of the Transport Board’s services is the most urgent public work in Auckland to-day, and everything possible should be done to facilitate its introduction and progress. It would go far to dispel the chronic evil of unemployment. THE BOOKMAKER FARCE AS far as the patronage of a large section of the public may be considered to lend him countenance, the bookmaker in this country would appear to he pursuing a legitimate business. He does not actually call the odds in the corridors of Parliament buildings, hut he has champions among Members of Parliament, and even the police find it difficult to regard him with the malevolence proper to a subject whose practices are frankly outside the law. The evil side to the bookmakers’ business is that many people who cannot afford to do so, are encouraged to bet on credit. Thousands of working people in this country are in debt to bookmakers, and the absence of legal support for their claims does not prevent the creditors from pressing their victims heavily. If there is no other logical distinction between the totalisator and the illegal forms of betting, there is at least this one. But public sentiment views the bookmaker tolerantly. He is even regarded as an unjustly harried member of society, and this attitude perhaps explains why bookmakers flourish almost on every corner, while the police campaign against them often seems strangely devoid of initiative, and correspondingly deficient in success. of the traffic could be facilitated by closer attention to the telephone and telegraph facilities used by the members of the craft. A bookmaker without his telephone is crippled, and it should not be difficult to penetrate the false name which usually cloaks the proprietor’s identity. Telegrams to bookmakers are shrewdly disguised, but the inevitable strong presumption of guilt should give investigators a good basis for action. Perhaps the most powerful instrument of all is in the hands of magistrates. Imprisonment for bookmakers is a weapon rarely used, hut there seemed to be a strong case for it at Wellington yesterday, when a man who did not deny that he was one of the biggest operators in the Dominion, and who was shown to have taken £1,774 in bets in five days, was fined a paltry £75. is to draw a distinction between the big man and the amateur ’ who merely lays mild odds among his friends, but the remedy there, too, is in the hands of the Bench. The present scale of gentle fines and gentler reproof generates in the public mind the suspicion that bookmakers are not being suppressed, but merely taxed. And if they are to he taxed and tolerated, then proper legal sanction might as well be given at once, and the present atmosphere of hypocrisy; dispelled.