Call For Inquiry Into Transport Industry

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31680, 16 May 1968, Page 1

Call For Inquiry Into Transport Industry

(New Zealand Press Association) WANGANUI, May 15. A judicial inquiry into rationalisation of the transport industry is needed, says the general manager of the Wanganui Harbour Board (Mr R. E. Buckeridge).

Calling for Government action, Mr Buckeridge said today: “It’s not a case of road versus rail, sea versus air or anything versus anything.

“The point is that there is growing concern about the efficiency and economy of existing transport services. “In view of the crucial importance of transport to the national economy, it’s a case of co-ordinating the most efficient and economic transport system possible.”

He was commenting on a report that price-cutting by road and rail transport has forced the Northern Steam Ship Company to scrap its

Onehunga to Dunedin container service. “It’s the same old story,” Mr Buckeridge said. “It's the sort of scrabbling for business that we’ve been frightened of all along. “Where Wanganui had to bear the brunt of it in the past, now it’s spreading further and further afield.” Far from this competition lowering transport costs, the indirect impact could be “catastrophic.” Mr Buckeridge said the loss of the Northern Steam ship service alone would make redundant part of a new container terminal near Onehunga and another one at Dunedin. “What a waste of capital,” he said. The economic use of other port services would also

suffer, affecting not only port employees but allied workers such as lorry drivers. In turn their loss of pur chasing power would be felt by the whole community. Mr Buckeridge said this repeated pattern would create depressed areas, particularly provincial centres relying heavily on their ports.

“A lot of people don't seem to realise the effect on a district. What Wanganui and to some extent Gisborne have lost, other ports are now starting to lose.”

In spite of repeated representations to the Government, these areas had been unable to change the “unfair, advantage” given by the Government to the railways. “It’s a Government body and so nobody else matters apparently.” Mr Buckeridge suggested that the price-fixing methods of the railways should be one of the problems investigated by a public inquiry into transport. This would decide the relative roles of rail, road, sea and air. It would ascertain where each was most efficient and with what type of cargo.

If this was not done and the industry as a whole was not co-ordinated within the next four years, the advent then of container cargoes would catch New Zealand disastrously unprepared, Mr Buckeridge said.