CUTTING ALLOCATIONS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 694, 20 June 1929, Page 9

CUTTING ALLOCATIONS

PUBLIC WORKS IN NORTH DEPUTATION TO MINISTER The question of Public Works allocations in the Whangarei district, which includes the Bay o! Islands electorate, will he the subject of a deputation which will wait on the Hon. E. A. Ransom, Minister of Public Works, on Wednesday, July 3. Captain Rushworth, M.P. lor Bay of Islands, who has just returned from Wellington, had an interview there with the Minister on the question and as a result telegraphed to the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates, member lor Kaipara, to Mr. Murdoch, member for Marsden, and to the chairmen of counties in the Bay of Islands electorate, requesting them to join in a deputation to wait upon the Minister. Failing satisfaction from the Minister, the deputation will also see the Prime Minister. Last year £424,000 was voted to the Public Works Department for all districts, but this -year the total vote to be asked for is £24,000 less. Of the reduction a very heavy proportion falls upon the Whangarei district, which received £63.002 last year, but is to be granted £49,150 in the coming year. Captain Rushworth has already entered a most energetic protest, and states that he will carry this protest to every possible length if the Government persists in the view that economy should call for its first sacrifice by cutting down the money available for backhlock roads. The argument that the North had more than its share in the immediate past has no appeal to the member for the Bay of Islands, who maintains that any visitor to the North, possessing elementary knowledge of the rest of the Dominion, could not miss seeing that North Auckland, although settlement commenced there, had been greatly neglected by earlier administrators.