The South Island’s secondary ports

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33966, 6 October 1975, Page 14

The South Island’s secondary ports

According to the Minister of Forests (Mr Moyle), Timaru was chosen by the Forest Service and the Japanese buyers as the port through which logs from storm-damaged forests in Canterbury will be shipped. The public can therefore be reasonably confident that the decision was made with reference to commercial rather than parochial considerations. The decision will, no doubt, have pleased the Government; this large if temporary export trade will pass through one of the secondary ports likely to be affected adversely when Lyttelton and Port Chalmers begin to handle containers. The Government must beware of trying to divert trade to these secondary ports at the price of economic inefficiency. If large numbers of the logs have to be carried to Timaru by road this could be the case even after this recent decision.

The Government’s wish to avoid having the South Island’s secondary ports decline as more and more goods pass through the container ports is understandable. But the advantages of containerisation could be cancelled out if unwise efforts are made to keep other goods flowing through secondary ports which could be handled more efficiently and economically at the major ports. This need not mean that ports such as Timaru and Bluff must decline into insignificance, although difficult adjustments will be necessary for those ports which rely heavily on the handling of goods which will be handled, in future, in containers. Container facilities at Auckland and Wellington have not prevented secondary ports in the North Island, or indeed the major South Island ports, from holding their own. Particularly, the Government should keep in mind that most of the country’s secondary ports would benefit from a revitalisation of coastal shipping which has been all but killed off by the Cook Strait ferry and low rail haulage charges. One of the quickest ways the Government could show it is serious about its 1972 promise to “safeguard the economic interests of those areas which are likely to be seriously affected by the loss of trade through the centralisation of container shipping ” would be to cease to subsidise the railways: rail haulage rates would then rise to their true economic level.

To pursue a policy of regional development, regardless of economic efficiency, would not be sound. Regional development should not mean sustaining uneconomic industries or activities in areas which are declining or where growth is slow, but encouraging those industries and activities which can be conducted efficiently in those areas. Secondary ports may have to scale their activities down. But there are jobs which they can still handle better than the larger ports through which most imports and exports will have to pass if the benefits of containerisation are to be realised. Provided the calculations of the Forest Senice and the Japanese purchasers are correct, the export of wind-thrown logs through Timaru should prove to be one of those jobs.