"IN A BAD WAY."

Auckland Star, Volume LVX, Issue 268, 12 November 1934, Page 9

"IN A BAD WAY."

SHIPPING TRADE.

EFFECTS OF SUBSIDIES.

SIR ALAN ANDERSON'S VIEWS.

Sir Alan Garrett Anderson, chairman of managers of the Orient Line, arrived in Auckland by the Niagara this morning. During his stay in New Zealand, Sir Alan will tour as far eouth as Eklerslie, in North Otago, will see the thermal wonders at Kotorua, and will for a few days be the guest of his Excellency the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. Sir Alan said that this year two of the company's ships would be coming to New Zealand with tourists, and the company was building a new ship, to be named Orion. She was being built at Barrow-in-Furness, England, and would be launched by the Duke of Gloucester by wireless from Brisbane. "The world's shipping trade is in a very bad way, owing to world trade shrinkage," sa'id Sir Alan. "As a supplementary reason, there are many countries indulging in subsidies and thereby keeping in existence ships which would"otherwise be scrapped. This interference has been carried to such lengths as entirely to upset the basis of commerce." British shipping had to face artificial competition with foreign countries, with foreign treasuries behind them. But ship owners had debated the problem, and while they disliked and deprecated any extension of the interference by Governments, either by restraint or by subsidy, they felt that where legitimate British enterprise was made impossible by a deliberate and sustained foreign attack conducted at the expense of foreign treasuries, it was not only proper but necessary for the British Government concerned to contravene and sustain the British enterprise which was threatened, until decent order could once more be restored for commerce. "What should be done necessarily varies in each case," said Sir Alan. "In the North Atlantic the Government has encouraged the Cunard and White Star companies, and has assisted them to. finance the Queen Mary. In the trade in which you in New Zealand are so much concerned, San Francisco, Australia, and New Zealand, I understand the Governments principally interested are at the moment in active debate. "The problem of tramp shipping is distinctly separate from that of the liner, and at the time of my leaving England ship owners of Great Britain had decided to call a world conference in the hope of devising some scheme of nationalising tramp tonnage. As it is impossible to fill a sieve with water, so it is hopeless to reduce the volume of redundant tonnage if a fresh supply of unnecessary ships is being constantly brought into being by Government intervention and subsidies."

Sir Alan said that what was necessary was a scheme for nationalising the world market for tramp tonnage, to secure the agreement of all the principal nations not to go on creating unnecessary tonnage.