Motive To Support Coal Interests

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30481, 1 July 1964, Page 15

Motive To Support Coal Interests

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright}

SYDNEY, June 30. It was ironical that the bid to break the overseas monopoly of the coastal oil tanker business should have brought the bidder into collision with the Government, said an editorial in the Sydney “Daily Mirror” today.

Mr R. W. Miller, the managing-director of the company which is interested in collieries, hotels and a large brewery, has said the bank’s refusal means that his company faced loss and damages claims which eould aggregate £600,000. “This is the outcome of a belated Government decision (forced on it by Mr Miller) to give the Australian coastal oil trade to Australian-built ships manned by all-Austra-lian crews. Except for Miller’s Canopus (already in the trade), all out coast-wise oil moves now in foreign-owned ships manned by cheap Asian labour,” said the editorial. “Mr Miller went into the

oil business chiefly to force up the cost of bulk fuel oil, which has been pushing coal steadily off the market since the mid-fifties.

“To get tanker business for Australian ship-yards the Government now allows would-be oil carriers to import tankers only if they lodge a £250,000 bond and order a replacement tanker to be built here.

“The Government says that Mr Miller has not met either condition. Now, it is forcing him to re-export his latest purchase and probably the third, due soon,” said the “Mirror.”

“If its new policy Is the right one, it is strange that the Government did not act before this through the Australian National Line. There would have been no need then to depend on Mr Miller, or anyone else, meeting conditions which impose financial stress on any promoter working on a limited budget. “This whole sorry mess was never necessary. It underlines the fact that the Government has failed to shape any full, national policy on either transport or fuel,” it said.