MACHINERY NOT USED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 June 1940, Page 2

MACHINERY NOT USED

ON HAWKE’S BAY RIVER WORK ACTION OF THE MEMBER FOR NAPIER. ■ INFORMATION CONVEYED TO BOARD. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) HASTINGS, June 10. How the member for Napier, Mr Barnard, unknown to the Minister of Public Works, Mr Semple, took successful steps to countermand the use of machinery on" works connected with the control of the Ngaruroro River and to take on more men instead was explained to the Hawke's Bay Rivers Board to day in a letter from Air Semple. The Minister said the machinery was in Napier or Hastings, and when he was in hospital suffering from a breakdown in health Mr Barnard made a vigorous protest to Mr Fraser, then acting-Prime Minister, against machines being used at all. When Mr Semple was in Australia the machines' were shifted off the job unknown to him. “The reason why I could not meet you in debate,” said Mr Semple in his letter to the board, “was that I knew the obvious question you would ask me was ‘Who broke the gentlemen's agreement, Who shifted that machin-, ery?’ And I would have been compelled to reply that it was the result of the action of my colleague, the Speaker of the House of Representatives „ when I was indisposed and absent from my office.”

Members of the board considered that they had been exonerated from blame for the prolongation of the job and its increased cost. “This seems to have developed into a private quarrel between Mr Semple and Mr Barnard, and the board does not want to get mixed up in any political row,” said Mr L. E. Harris. “I am not going to get into any political arguments, but if Mr Barnard made representations to have the machinery taken away it should be made known,” said the chairman, Mr C. Lassen.

The board decided to make representations to the Labour Department to meet the extra costs involved in the use of manual labour.