The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1938. Transport Monopoly

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22385, 26 April 1938, Page 12

The Press TUESDAY, APRIL 26, 1938. Transport Monopoly

Within the last few days the purchase by the State of 12 road transport concerns has been announced, nine of them in the Auckland area, three in Canterbury. The Auckland concerns appear to be freight carriers, the Canterbury ones provide passenger services; and it is an interesting point that, as the competition of these three with the railways is not extensive, officials of the companies see in the Government’s decision to take them over the plain indication of a policy to “ absorb all road services operating.” This, of course, is the logic of the Government’s actions during the last two years and a half. Purchase of the competitive road services, on the ground that “ co-ordina- “ tion ” with the railway services is economically necessary, must sooner or later be extended to non-competitive services, as it has begun to be. for two very strong reasons. First, and generally, the bias of the Government is towards the nationalising of industry. Where the process is begun in order to protect one nationalised service, the opportunity to carry it on and complete it may be expected to appeal irresistibly to Socialist Ministers, Second, it should not be overlooked that, so long as privately operated services exist, comparison of their standards of efficiency with those of the State services will be possible and will be critically emphasised. Since it is quite certain that the State road services will more and more definitely be regulated by the interests of the rail services,- the comparison is one that threatens to be inconvenient; and the Government is not likely to grudge the public money that purchases security against it and at the same time makes a whole-hog job of socialising land transport. But when inferences like this are so plainly to be drawn from the Government’s actions, it is a monstrous abuse of power that adds act to act towards a revolutionary achievement while Ministerial statements fail to declare or justify the intention. They are. indeed, not merely inadequate as an exposition of the policy being carried out: they are contradictory and deceptive. From time to time, in reply to questions and protests, the Minister for Transport has suggested that it is a mistake to suppose that the Government proposes to drive private enterprise in transport off the roads: its aims, he has said, are much narrower. Nevertheless, absorption of the privately owned services has rapidly continued: and nobody has yet explained where or when it is to stop. At the end of November the Prime Minister told a deputation, energetically, that the Government had no desire to buy out ail the commercial services: it wanted “simply “ to co-ordinate ” them. The Minister for Transport even more energetically, but inconsistently. told the deputation that “the Govern“ment had to protect the railways, and that “was all there was to it.” He must have had in mind the blunt words he had used in the House of Representatives a few weeks earlier, to precisely the same effect. But. as we mentioned about three weeks ago, Mr Semple is now professing a fine impartiality: the Government has “ no bias ” in favour of either road transport or rail transport, but is studying mersly “the general public interest.” If this were true, it is sufficient to say that the Transport Licensing Act would not be cast in its present form and would not be interpreted and administered as it is. Unfortunately the truth is that the Government, having judged the transport issue without the necessary investigation. has committed itself to a policy whose name is co-ordination but whose meaning is monopoly—a State monopoly in transport, governed by the first principle of “ protecting “ the railways and that is all there is to it.’ The purchase of commercial undertakings, in swift succession, shows how the policy is being worked out. What is not yet shown is the immediate cost; but though that cannot be sma.il, it may be trivial compared with the ultimate cost in the loss of transport efficiency by reactionary Socialism.