SAVING PETROL

Press, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23401, 7 August 1941, Page 6

SAVING PETROL

“Government Should Set Good Example”

MINISTERS’ REPLIES TO SUGGESTION

fP.R.) WELLINGTON, August 6. The suggestion that the Government should set a good example and try to save oil fuel, was made by Mr W. J. Broadfoot (Opposition, Waitomo), in the House to-night, when speaking on the Estimates. He considered that more gas producing units could be used on State vehicles.

“An enormous amount of travelling is done in connexion with State departments,” Mr Broadfoot said, “and I would like to know how many passenger and freight services are being run, what amount of benzine is being used, and wfiy are not gas producers being put on to all these services? We have had two years of war, and yet we are still using benzine instead of other commodities. The public has had pretty scant warning about the latest petrol cut, and if the Government had set a good example, many private people would have put up with the inconvenience of gas producers on their cars, and would have had them installed.” Mr Broadfoot also mentioned that the Minister for Mines (the Hon, P. C. Webb) had recently travelled through the North Island in a large Ministerial car when, he believed, the Minister could have used the railways. Mr Webb said that he had had to travel by car to visit a coal mine that the Government had taken over, and turned into an economic success, and in addition he had been taking Mr W. Holmes, the trades union representative of the British Government, on a tour of the North Island.

The Minister for Supply (the Hon. D. G. Sullivan) said that more gas producers were in use in New Zealand than in the whole of Australia. The number was in the vicinity of 500 or 1000, and the Government had been one of the first to attach producer gas units to vehicles. Already 40 were in use in the Railways Department, and a few freight vehicles had also been provided with units. He could assure the House and the country that petrol restrictions were being applied as rigorously in Government departments as they were to private users, and the latest cut had meant a saving of at least 10 per cent, in fuel consumption in State departments. The manufacture of producer gas units was licensed only in so far as the Government desired to prevent “dud” plants being foisted on the public. The Minister for Railways (the Hon. R. Semple) said that if any employee in the service of the State was shown to be wasteful of petrol he would soon be looking for a job. Hundreds of thousands of gallons.of petrol had been saved through taking 150 to 200 transport trucks off the road, and the goods they carried transferred to the railway haulage. The trucks had been handed over to the Army, which was badly in need of them.