Claim “Utter Nonsense”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31239, 10 December 1966, Page 3

Claim “Utter Nonsense”

(N.Z. Press Association) WELLINGTON, December 9. “It is utter nonsense to blame the increase in rail charges on the general wage order,” the president of the Public Service Association (Mr W. E. B. Tucker) said today. He was commenting on a statement made yesterday by the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce (Mr G. E. Stock) who claimed the rises in rail fares and freight charges were “a result of the general wage order.” “The fact that the Government itself is taking a lead in increasing prices at this time is strangely inconsistent with the Deputy Prime Minister’s call to private businessmen to try to hold prices after the order,” Mr Tucker said. “It is significant that the Government should wait until

after the election to levy this new impost on the public—and that it should make the announcement through a Minister who is about to retire from office. After a year in which the Railways Department made a working profit of more than £750,000 the increase in fares and freight charges is without any justification whatever. “No decision has yet been reached to pass any part of the 2f per cent general order

on to the wages of railwaymen, or any other Government employees,” said Mr Tucker. “Until the ruling rates survey is taken in February next year, it cannot possibly be known how much of that 2j per cent can legitimately be added to the cost structure of the Railways Department—but even then it can only be a small proportion of the increases now being arbitrarily imposed on the public.”