The Napier Harbour Board : a study in local body administration and politics

Abstract

I was prompted to choose this subject after reading the account of the symposium on Local Government held at the 1956 conference of the N.Z. Institute of Public Administration. Although the conference devoted most of its attention to the study of territorial local bodies, some of its conclusions were no doubt equally applicable to 'ad hoc' bodies such as harbour boards. I decided therefore, to select the Napier Harbour Board as a 'case study' to examine in some detail its administration, financial structure, method of representation, industrial relations, its relationship with other local bodies and the place it occupies as part of a dominion-wide transport system. At first sight a thesis devoted largely to the study of a single local authority might appear rather purposeless and designed to gratify parochial interests only. I have been fully conscious of these pitfalls and have endeavoured therefore to relate local developments, wherever possible, to the national scene. Instead of writing an outline history of the Napier Harbour Board, I have concentrated on the politically more significant period 1920-34, bearing in mind however that there is scope for a historian of the caliber of a Dr. McLintock whose history of the Port of Otago must be regarded as being among the foremost contributions to local-body history in New Zealand.