Family Pays Duty On Boat

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31857, 9 December 1968, Page 26

Family Pays Duty On Boat

(N.Z. Press Association)

DUNEDIN, Dec. 8.

The Dunedin globe-

trotter, Mr A. M. MacLeod, reluctantly paid over $lOOO to the Customs Department yesterday, as import duty Owing on the former British minesweeper and trawler Heather George.

Mr MacLeod, who brought his family back in the Heather George on October 8 after their second round-the-world

trip, said today that he was unhappy about paying the money.

The duty amounts to 25 per cent of the value of the Heather George, which is at present tied up at the Rattray Street wharf. The payment was made after the Minister of Customs (Mr Shelton) had ruled that Mr MacLeod had not met the requirements for free entry of any ship sailed into New Zealand, that the owner should have been absent from New Zealand for not less than 21 months and that he should have owned the vessel for at least one

year before departure for New Zealand. Mr Shelton said the MacLeod family could not comply with the second provision.

This was because the ownership and use provision applied until the time the MacLeods left Rarotonga, their last port of call before coming to New Zealand. Mr MacLeod claimed today that the Customs Department had at first conceded this provision in that it considered the boat in use until it reached New Zealand. Since then the department had changed its views. The future of the Heather

George is undecided, although Mr MacLeod believes he can sell it to recover the money paid in duty. “We don’t want to do this, though. We worked hard to get the vessel and we want to hang on to it,” he said. Mr MacLeod said that he had received five different offers of loans before the Customs Department deadline, which was believed to be Monday. “I understand the boat would have been confiscated on Monday, although I didn’t receive any advice in advance. I was told this was coming but I never received a letter,” he said.