The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1912, THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 282, 25 May 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, MAY 25, 1912, THE LOCAL GOVERNMENT BILL.

The conference of delegates from local bodies to discuss the proposed Local Government Bill, which has just concluded its sittings in Wellington, has done excellent work, and it has more than justified its inception. The Bill as it emerges from the conference would hardly recognise itself in the domestic mirror, for it has been altered and amended from the Dan of its short title to the Beersheba of its schedules. The BUI was, of course, never intended to be anything but a foundation upon which it was proposed that practical men from all quarters of the Dominion should build a substantial measure for a final review by Parliament. It had, indeed, its genesis in a very proper appreciation of George Herbert's now proverbial couplet: 'Who aimeth at the sky Shoots higher far than he that means a tree. The .Government admittedly aimed at the sky, and it 'has been left for the conference to hit the tree. We are not at all surprised to find that whole sections of the Bill have gone by the board, and not at all disposed to regret that the administration of education and hospital and charitable aid have been practically eliminated from the Bill. The merging of road boards into counties and the absorption of lesser town districts by counties, and the larger ones by boroughs, will also tend to decrease the number of local bodies, and further reform in this direction will be gained by the municipalities taking over a number of duties that are now undertaken by lesser local bodies within their boundaries. The whole aim of the conference, indeed, appears to have been to reduce as far as compatible with sound administration the number of local bodies and the machinery—often unduly expensive—which is necessarily attached to them. In this connection, the Hon. G. W. Russell quoted some illuminative statistics to the conference. It will come as a distinct surprise to the people of the Dominion to learn that, with a population of a little over a million, we have no fewer than 3877 local bodies, elaborately equipped, for the purpose of local government. Assuming that these bodies have an average membership of six, the Minister stated that there are 23,262 persons engaged in some form or other of local government, or that one out of every forty-three persons of the entire population is so engaged; or, taking only the male population, one out of eYery fifteen. It is quite true, of eonrsp, that this ridiculous proportion should be materially reduced, and this the conference has fully recognised. The aims of the Bill in establishing the essentials of sound government were to provide for I simplicity of form and method, efficiency as regards local and district needs, economy of administration, sound and assured

finance, capacity for promoting local development, and power to group contiguous districts where there is community of interest, for common purposes. This programme, of course, simply spells reduction, and it is this \\liich the conference Iris aimed at. We are also quite at one v! K h the conference in thinkiag that the s\stem of Government subsidies should be drastically revised, in the direction of making the payments more in proportion to the requirements of the various districts concerned than in proportion to their revenue. The full discussion of the conference and the nature of its recommendations will require a closer perspective to. assess them at their full value, but it is certain that the gathering of delegates has been intensely practical, and that the measure will now go forward to Parliament backed by recommendations that will make the task of putting it into acceptable and workable shape much easier than it otherwise would have been. The money spent upon the conference has been well expended, and a gratifying feature of its sittings was the enthusiastic and non-par lisan attitude in which the various features of the Bill were approached and (liscussed.