SINGLE OWNERSHIP POLICY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 281, 26 November 1937, Page 6

SINGLE OWNERSHIP POLICY.

"Owing, however, to the difficulties of securing co-ordination while the road services are operated in Bmall units, a policy of single ownership, whereby certain road services would be taken over by the State and operated by the Railways Department, was adopted." The quotation is from the latest annual report I of the Transport Department. Yesterday, meeting a deputation of private transport I representatives, both the Prime Minister and I the Minister of Transport professed surprise jut references to the "single ownership" policy, iund Mr. Semple remarked: "We cannot be

blamed if people arc getting nightmares about nothing." But there is a "single ownership policy." At present it has not gone beyond the acquisition of certain longdistance road goods services, but (as Mr. •Savage and some of his Ministers have often remarked) the Government cannot do everything at once. Iff a statement in July, Air. Semple declared that the only objective of the single ownership policy was an efficient national transport service. "If," he added, "the Government's policy to reach this end involves socialism, it is because socialism happens to be the most efficient means of reaching that end." It is not easy to reconcile this statement with the assurances given yesterday that the Government has never intended to nationalise the transport system, and that "so far as is humanly possible existing services will be allowed to remain." Possibly the Government has decided that it has gone far enough for the present, but it seems that private transport operators must continue to live with the knowledge that, in the blessed name of efficiency and co ordination, the move towards socialism may at any time be resumed.