BUS SERVICES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXV, Issue 267, 10 November 1934, Page 12

BUS SERVICES.

TRANSPORT BOARD. PRIVATE CONTRACT VALIDATED. CHANGES IN THE BILL. (By Telegraph.—Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, this day. The. Auckland Transport Board Empowering Bill was passed by the House of Representatives last night after the member in charge, Mr. 11. <;. K. Mason, had secured a further modification of the clause which validates the agreement authorising the board to coutra-ut with a private contractor to run certain bus services. Mr. Mason stated that the Local Bills Committee had mutilated the clause by striking out onu portion and inserting the new provision that nothing in it should authorise any contractor to conduct any service other than as the holder of a passenger service license under the Transport Act. Unless he could make a slight addition to the clause, he would prefer to delete the two subsections, which had been mutilated by the committee.

The chairman of (he committee, Mr. A. E. Jull, said (he Auckland Transport Board was a transport authority, which could issue a passenger license. It wanted to contract out, leaving the contractor not a licensee, but the Transport Coordination Board considered these services .should not be run except by a licensee, who would be under an obligation to carry out the terms of the award in respect of his employees, and to observe other conditions. If the Transport Board was losing money, and hoped to save something by contracting out, it meant that the contractors could do work more cheaply than the board, under conditions which would not be permitted to all ordinary licensee. He objected to these sub-clauses.

Mr. Mason thereupon secured the deletion of the relevant sub-clauses, but retained die provisions for llio validating of the agreement between the board and Messrs. Bonnet, Bell and Fenton to conduct, a passenger service, and authorising the board to subsidise or otherwise assist any bus service where such service is beneficial to the board's undertakings.