A SERIOUS JOKE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 76, 30 March 1928, Page 6

A SERIOUS JOKE.

Laughter as well as indignation will greet the suggestion of a prominent Australian that in order to prop up Victorian railways against motor competition owners of cars should be prohibited from giving rides to "relatives, friends, and others." That is to say—if we may move the venue to Auckland—a Remuera resident on his way to town would not be allowed to pick up a friend who is on his way to the train. Even a man taking his wife out for a drive (we presume that if a wife is not a "relative" she comes under the category of "others") might be liable t? a fine. And what an army of inspectors wbuld be required to patrol the roads to see that motorists did not carry the railways' passengers. The suggestion, of course, is absurd, but it is rather more than a joke. It illustrates the lengths to which some defenders of the older forms of transport are prepared to go in stifling competition. Sir John Quick is no irresponsible nonentity. He was one of the architects of federation, he served in tbe Federal Government, and he is a Deputy-President of the Federal Arbitration Court. When such a man suggests, apparently quite seriously, that a man should be prevented by law from carrying friends or relatives in his motor car, it is time for the community to look again to the defence? of its liberties. —