Delays Carry On

The appeal was quashed but the delays carried on. It was three months before the Justice Department could set a date for the election of trustees. The original trust activists formed themselves into a group called Trust Action and put up six candidates, all of which were elected.

They had campaigned on the platform of building nothing but taverns and so after the final returns came through (September 1975) they were ready to go ahead with their plans. On the last day of Parliament the plans were officially signed and sealed when a bill was passed making the Tera whiti Trust into a district trust (rather than a suburban one) and thus making it independent of the Licensing Control Commission

Following this they quickly found premises in Karori on which to set up a bottle store, held a public meeting to discuss its siting, and called for objections.

There were four objections from the Karori Wine Shop, the Kelburn Wine Shop, the Wellington branch of the Hotel Association, and a group of Baptists. There was a notable absence of any individual objections by Karori residents.

Once the hearing was held and the objections overruled, it was simply a matter of raising the $23,000 needed to get the business on the road. Normally a loan could be raised with the authority of the Treasury, but on this occasion it seems that Muldoon had given the Treasury a prior warning about approving any Trust loans.