The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1381.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 4524, 28 November 1884, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1381.

For the cause that lacks assistance. For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future ln the distance, And the good that wo can do.

The proposal to make Auckland a " free port" by abolishing all charges upon shipping—an idea by no means new—has been discussed with .considerable freedom in shipping circles during the last tew days. Our morning contemporary, when championing the proposition in an article early this week, professed to prove from the Board's last balance-sheet that the amount of shipping charges, might easily be recouped from natural increase, the Board meanwhile misappropriating the loan raised for graving dock and wharves in the firm faith that the good time coming would place them in funds to repay their defalcations. Fortunately, the law prohibits any .such manipulation of moneys that have been borrowed for specific works of a permanent character. But if no legal obstacle had interposed, we trust the restraining influences in the Board would have prevented, the inauguration of a system of vicious and dangerous, finance. In a letter discussing the subject, the Chairman of the Board laid bare three rather material flaws in our contemporary's balancesheet—(l) It had taken credit for ,£B,OOO interest temporarily derivable from .the dock loan, which will rapidly disappear as the dock now contracted for goes ahead; (2) it had taken no account of the .£5,000 remissions in wharf tolls and shipping charges made at the beginning of the present year; and (3) nothing was reckoned for the cost of the new dredger and expenses of working it in improving our wharves and extending the harbour endowment by the reclamation of Freeman's Bay. In short, the balance-sheet, when critically analysed, revealed the disagreeable fact that the Board by their recent authorisations of works and remissions of taxation have already drawn upon the convenient bank of the future to the tune of whjch, unless our wharves are to fall into decay, and improvements come to a standstill, will take the estimated surplusage- of revenue for the next thiee years to pay off, and place the Board right with their bankers. When these facts were established, our contemporary made the singularly impotent reply that "The liability argument used by the Chairman proves too much to be of service to him. It might have held good as against the making of any reduction at all on. the wharf charges, but it is weak and inconsistent as employed for arresting the process halfway." If this sentence has any intelligent meaning, it signifies that although the Board saw its way toanimmediateremission of £5,000 per annum of vexatious taxation, without embarrassment, the reduction oijght not to have been made until the Board was in a position to remit £io,qoo. So absurd a proposition scarcely calls for serious reply. On examining the reductions that have been made, we findthat asun_.of,£2,soo was abandoned in abolishing whari tolls, which were an irritating and economically wasteful system of raising revenue, and the other half, ,£2,500 consisted of remissions in shipping charges, and were therefore a step to that final abolition of all chaiges which should be the aim of our harbour management, so long as if is not affined by a policy of sloth and . retrogression,

The Board could only forego immediately the nregent revenue from

shipping charges by pursuing one of two j courses: the first alternative is the, stoppage of all improvements, confining their operations solely to mail [ tenance; the other alternative, a restoration of the tolls, and an increase of the already heavy wharfage rates, j We do riot believe that either measure would be acceptable to the mercantile community or conducive to the interests of the port. Shipowners would lose | more from inadequate facilities —and , there are already loud outcries on .th£ t score—than they now pay in the very moderate dues charged under the present tariff; and merchants, gaining not one farthing from a remission of taxation for the sole benefit of shipowners, would stoutly object to an increase in the already heavy charges which they bear for the purpose of defraying the cost of services that are actually rendered to shipping. We do not believe any man with an iota of commercial knowledge will contend that the abolition of the present shipping dues would lessen freights by a single sixpence, or tempt half-a-dozen vessels in the year to come to our port which would not have come otherwise. The term " free port" is attractive, and would undoubtedly be a very good advertisement in its way, but when it is remembered that the total revenue from shipping charges last year, distributed over all the local and foreign vessels entering our port, amounted to only .£4,864, the idea that the current charges are prohibitory or deterrent melts away.

In its local bearings, the matter narrows down into a question- whether the merchant shall defray the entire.cost of harbour management and improvement, recovering it in additions to profit, or whether the ship-owner shall contribute his share from fares and freights. The remissions to foreign vessels would in the main be a clear loss to the commuflity, unless they should induce increased trade. If an important steamship company should ever approach the Board with a proposition dependent upon harbcur dues, it would then be wise to meet it in a liberal spirit. But as the case stands now, there is no gain either apparent or prospective that would warrant the Board in either embarrassing their finances or harassing importers and carriers with increased charges for an object that is largely sentimental. We do not wish to assert that the idea of a " free port" is not a good one; the Board ought to keep it steadily in view, as only secondary to themorepressing object of making our port take first rank in facilities far transacting shipping business. But 'the commercial expansion which is claimed for this movement would scarcely be attained if shipping were relieved through charges heaped upon importers. As the proposal meditates giving all vessels the use of the harbour and wharves absolutely free of cost, fleets of shipping, unless they came here expressly to be docked, would add- nothing to the harbour revenues, and it is scarcely apparent in what way the Board can reap the promised harvest except it be contended that the shifting of ,£4,864 taxes from ship-owne:s to importers will mak* our merchants sell a very much larger amount of goods, and employ more ships. This is one of those insignificant details with which critics so often snuff out pretty schemes gorgeously arrayed in fine phrases; still the Board will have to weigh it before resolving to place a blind financial trust in chimerical blessings, and the favours of the mysterious Providence that watches over soulless Corporations. We utterly lack faith in tho value of the term " free port" as a convertible security at the Board's bankers.