Final submissions on shipping

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32540, 25 February 1971, Page 15

Final submissions on shipping

(N.Z. Press Association)

WELLINGTON,

Feb. 23. Responsibility for the economic viability of the New Zealand shipping industry should be in the hands of a specific Government department, the Commission of Inquiry into merchant shipping was told today by counsel for the Shipowners’ Federation (Mr R. W. Edgley).

At present no Minister ot Government department took direct responsibility for shipping, he said. The Shipowners’ Federation said the Marine Department would be suitable to adopt the responsibility, but its powers and staff would need to be substantially expanded. At present its function in

the shipping sphere was little more than regulatory. Mr Edgley also said that in the interests of the development and modernisation of New Zealand shipping the Government should be recommended to introduce special depreciation benefits to allow ships to be depreciated on a free basis up to 120 per cent of their initial cost.

The Government should also be recommended to ensure competition between all forms of transport, in particular between coastal shipping and the railways. His fourth suggestion was the provision for a new dry dock of modern dimensions on the south side of Auckland Harbour, as there were too few such facilities. Mr Edgley -said Marine Department safety standards were in some cases too rigid. He recommended a general overhaul of the regulations with a view to a more real-

istic approach, bearing in mind that the required levels of safety were still extremely important. Planning of port facilities for New Zealand should be better co-ordinated, and separate legislation should be enacted for the fishing industry, he said. Counsel for the Seamen’s Union (Mr N. Taylor) repeated his client’s belief in a New Zealand-owned shipping line.

“After all, the Government is already in business in shipping with the railway ferries, and the best way for it to go into the industry would be simply by enlarging its operations,” he said. If the Government could find s9om for aircraft for N.A.C., then surely it could find the far smaller amount of overseas funds which would be required to provide part of the costs of shipping investment, Mr Taylor said. The union did not suggest that New Zealand would be

able to provide all the shipping required for its exports. “But the fact that we would have some part in it would give us a lever to protect ourselves,” he said. if the Government declined to step in, a public corporation should be set up, Mr Taylor said. He doubted if there was capital in New Zealand to be invested in coastal shipping, and said that if the Union Steam Ship Company was sold to Thomas Nationwide Transport, then New Zealand would possibly have no coastal shipping. He said it was also the union's view that no special conditions for Tasman trade could be written into any agreement approving the take-over of the Union company without New Zealand’s having some part in the trade herself.

The union really had no other quarrels with the Shipowners’ submissions. The commission has now completed its hearings.