This Act may be cited as the Main Highways Amendment Act, 1927, and shall be read together with and deemed part of the Main Highways Act, 1922 (hereinafter referred to as the principal Act).

In addition to the expenditure from the Revenue Fund authorized by section fifteen of the principal Act, all moneys payable by the Crown in respect of any work of an experimental nature undertaken by the Board in connection either with the construction or the maintenance of a main highway may be paid out of moneys appropriated by Parliament from the Revenue Fund.

Notwithstanding anything to the contrary in the principal Act, the whole of the cost of any experimental work undertaken by the Board as aforesaid may be borne by the Crown; or the Board may, in its discretion, provide a greater proportion of such cost than is prescribed by section eighteen or by section nineteen, as the case may be, of the principal Act.

If any question arises as to whether any work undertaken by the Board is of an experimental nature within the meaning of this section it shall be determined by the Board, whose decision shall be final.

This section shall be deemed to have been in force as from the first day of April, nineteen hundred and twenty-seven.

Section fifteen of the principal Act is hereby amended by inserting the word “immediately” before the word “required” in subsection two.

Any moneys transferred to the Construction Fund from the Revenue Fund pursuant to section fifteen of the principal Act, whether such transfer has been made before or after the passing of this Act, may, without further appropriation than this section, be repaid from the Construction Fund to the Revenue Fund at such times and in such amounts as the Minister of Finance, after consultation with the Board, may determine.

Where the Board has, whether before or after the passing of this Act, delegated to a local authority pursuant to section nine of the principal Act any of the powers of the Board in relation to a main highway, and the local authority has failed to exercise such delegated powers, or has failed to exercise such powers to the satisfaction of the Board, the Board may withhold from such local authority payment in whole or in part of any moneys required by the principal Act to be provided by the Board out of the Main Highways Account for the construction or maintenance of that or any other main highway in respect of which the local authority has powers by delegation from the Board; and may continue to withhold payment of any such moneys until any works in question have been performed to its satisfaction.

Section twenty-three of the principal Act as amended by section four of the Main Highways Amendment Act, 1926, is hereby amended by adding the following proviso:—

Any local authority empowered by the principal Act to borrow money for the purposes of a main highway may, by special order and without taking the steps prescribed by sections nine to thirteen of the Local Bodies’ Loans Act, 1926, borrow any such money towards its proportion of the cost of the reconstruction of any bridge being not less than thirty feet in length and forming part of a main highway, if a resolution by the District Highways Council to the effect that the reconstruction of the bridge is then necessary is confirmed by the Board.