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On the question of reclamations r. Roberts remarked that they were not primarily port works, although the Port interests should be protected from the land grabbers so that the interests of the Port were not adversely affected.
. Roberts thought we were not troubled by any major problem which private interests had shown their inability to cope with.
On these grounds he could not see the necessity for a Port Trust. He also thought that to set up the sort of administration envisaged ruld be an exceedingly costly undertaking, despite what the Committee had heard to the contrary, and that if there was no necessity for it, it seemed to him quite ridiculous to incur the considerable cost merely to have a Port Trust.
There would however, seem to be some real reason for a greater form of control which might be termed pilotage or guidance, direction and co-ordination of the various interests which were concerned with the Harbour, and he thought there was work for a Port Director who would absorb many of the functions of the Harbour Master wh would be the Chief Executive Official of the Port, and would be responsible for oo-ordinating the various interests concerned with the needs of the Port.
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He thought the Port Director should have a strong Advisory Committee and that the Committee would probably not have to meet very frequently, but that it should meet at regular intervals if not frequent ones, and more frequently should there be a specific reason for it to do so. The Committee should be drawn from all sections of the community who had interests in the Port of the Colony and so on.
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Government, shipping, docking, merchants, the Municipality,
He was inclined to think that the Port Director should be the Chairman of that Committee.
In answer to questions Mr. Roberts amplified his remarks in the following respects:
(a) He thought the Port Director should be a Government servant whore whole time would be at the service of the Government,
responsible directly to the Colonial Secretary, that the Port Director and the Harbour Master might be the same official but that in future the post of Port Director would be the senior one, the Harbour laster becoming a less important official similar in status to the present Chief Boarding Officer.
(b) The Chairman referred to Mr. Colman's view that the Chairman of the Port Trust need not have had port experience, and Mr. Roberts said that while he would be prepared to accept that view with regard to the Chairman of a Port Trust, he thought that in the case of a Port Director, who would be a Head of a Department, it would be desirable for him to have had some experience of port work. Mr. Trevor remarked that if the officer were a technical man he would be merely looking at problems from a technical point of view rather than from a business and convenience point of view. Port Director would get his technical advice from the Director of Public Works and the Port Engineer. On the other hand the business interests might put up excellent arguments from a purely business point of view, A Port Director who was a good administrator would tend to keep the balance even. Engineers tended to go in for rather more grandiose schemes than necessary for the Port. administrator would tend to neutralize this.
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Mr. Roberts said he agreed with a great deal of what had been said.
He ntirely agreed that the man selected should be a capable administrator but that his technical knowledge should be derived from experience of the water rather than from experience of engineering, and mentioned as an example the present Harbour Master.