SITTING ENDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 234, 2 October 1937, Page 12

SITTING ENDS.

GOODS SERVICES. NO IMMEDIATE DECISIONS. FIXING VALUE STANDARDS. An announcement that the tribunal did not intend immediately to forward any recommendations to the Minister was made by Sir Francis Frazer, chairman of the committee of three appointed *>y the Government to consider fair conditions of purchase for certain goods services to be acquired by the State, when the tribunal concluded its Auckland sitting yesterday afternoon. Sir Francis explained that if the tribunal was to build up standards of values on the basis of conditions existing in the Auckland district it might find afterwards that these standards were not applicable in southern areas. It would hear a group of representative Wellington cases first, as soon as these were ready to be submitted, and then it would have something to go on. That did not necessarily involve an unduly long wait for the Auckland operators.

The members of the tribunal are leaving Auckland this week-end^—Sir Francis for Taranaki, and Messrs L. H. Heslop and S. S. Millington for Wellington. Final Submissions.

General submissions covering the five cases heard in Auckland were presented yesterday. Mr. V. R. Meredith appeared for the Crown, Mr. North for McClymont's Transport, Limited, and Salter Transport, Mr. Leary for Felton Waikato Transport, Limited, and Northern Transport, Limited, and Mr. Craig for Hick's Transport.

Mr. North said that as far as the Railways Department was concerned it was involving no risk whatever in its proposals to take over the services which he represented. It was going to receive substantial profits, and so the companies in turn should receive fair and equitable treatment in the matter of compensation. No man receiving, say, £2000 annually from any business would be prepared to part with it —against his will, moreover—with compensation less than £10,000. There was no sign whatever of fairness and reasonableness in the offers which the Government had made in his own cases.

Mr. Leary submitted that in any case of an unwilling vendor he should in all fairness be given more than the equivalent of three years' revenue in the purchase price. Five years was a low period when it was considered that these men had now to turn round and try to build up some other business to a commensurate size. Case for Crown. Mr. Meredith submitted that the fact that the tribunal's warrant set out that nothing was to be paid for any monopoly value created as a result of the Transport Licensing Act meant that no value was to be attached to the various businesses for any advantages secured to them by the imposition of licensing. Any rate of profit actually earned above the rate of 15 per cent must be considered as due to the operations of the form of monopoly created by licensing.

What the operator had to offer, said Mr. Meredith, were a collection of used vehicles and a business subject to serious limitations—operation under an annual license without definite right of renewal and right of compensation if not renewed, and subjection to the risk of legislation terminating road competition, and to the risk of more intensive railway competition. The value of such an undertaking to the ordinary purchasers would be only the value of the fleet plus what the purchaser might think the precarious chances of being allowed to continue for a longer or shorter term might be worth. In other words the operators had really nothing to sell except the actual vehicles.

Fairness in the award of compensation must not be carried to the extent of unwarranted generosity of the taxpayers' money, contended Mr. Meredith.