SHIPPING RESTRICTIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 252, 25 October 1933, Page 6

SHIPPING RESTRICTIONS.

There has been some publicity emanating from Australia indicating that the Commonwealth is favourable to restriction or abolition of the carriage of passengers by American mail steamers between their country and ours, and possibly to the extension of the ban to the Fiji trade. In considering the question of excluding the Matson liners from carrying passengers between countries under the British flag there is a very wide difference between the position of New Zealand and that of our neighbour. The Australians protect their coastwise shipping to the extent that no mail boat can participate in the inter-State traffic with the exception of the trade between Sydney and Hobart in the summer season. And although the lifting of the embargo in this case has immensely benefited Tasmania, there has been an agitation against its continuance. The Wanganella, which runs from New Zealand to Melbourne, via Sydney, can carry passengers between N.S. A,;r . »nd Victoria, but not the Monowai when engaged in the same service. If New Zealand were a party to stopping passengers using American ships between the two countries this Dominion would bo dropped from the itinerary. Australia would not suffer, as it would remain the South Seas terminal, and even the trade with Fiji would not be affected, as nothing is more remote than the Colonial Office imposing a sectional embargo on foreign shipping. This is essentially an Imperial question, and the issues at stake are immense. Subsidised competition in shipping may be unfair, but the solution of the problem should be sought by an Imperial conference. Sectional action might gravely embarrass and injure what remains one of .Britain's most important industries—the transport of. travellers and world production over the Seven Seas.