Labour hopes promise of new ferry will be a winner

Press, 12 April 1978, Page 1

Labour hopes promise of new ferry will be a winner

By

PHILIP WORTHINGTON

Inter-island ferries are trumps. The Labour Party has declared the first of its promises in a bid for election-year gains in Canterbury: the restoration of a passenger-cargo ferry link between Lyttelton and Wellington. Without doubt the bid will be an attractive one to the people of Christ-

church and Canterbury. It will certainly be attractive to the voters of Lyttelton, a seat which boundary changes have marked as marginal. Twice in the last two days senior Labour members of Parliament have promised Christchurch meetings a new inter-is-land service. Each time the statement has been bald and to the point — a Labour Government will resurrect an inter-island ferry service.

Having scrapped the service, the present Government is in no position for an about-face. Whether Labour has the cards to turn the bid into a grandslam is perhaps open to question, but the Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) believes he holds a winning hand. He acknowledges that a Government subsidy “might be necessary” to get the service started. Personally, he does not think so.

He envisages a daily service with a roll-on vessel suitably adapted for passengers. Most of the passenger area would be given over to aircraft-type seating to provide economy fare travel and to cut overheads.

“There is any amount of tonnage in the sort of ships we are thinking of available right now. And it is a buyer’s market,” Mr Rowling said yesterday. “I have been assured by international shipping people that what we envisage is available right now and at a buyer’s price,” he said. Mr Rowling had been asked to elaborate on a statement by the Opposition spokesman for trade and industry, Mr W. W. Freer, in Christchurch on Monday evening, and his own promise to Lyttelton watersiders yesterday that “Labour will ensure a new inter-island ferry between Lyttelton and the North Island.” Asked about suggestions that restoration of the service might cost as much as SIOM to set. up and up to S2M a year to run, Mr Rowling said he did not think anyone could talk seriously about the costs until a full investigation of available ships had been made. “When estimating the running costs it must be borne in mind that the concept of the service is different to that which ran in the past. It will be an economy-type service," he said. “A Government subsidy might be necessary to get it started. I do not think so,” he said.

Nor could the service be seen in the light of present coastal cargo trade. It was part of a bigger plan to promote regional development, which itself would promote interisland trade, he said.

“But I have no doubt that it is in the public interest and in the interests of regional development to reintroduce the service,” said Mr Rowling. Earlier in the day, he had been given a standing ovation when he walked into the Lyttelton watersiders’ lunch room to address them briefly. About 200 had turned up to hear Mr Rowling, far more than had been expected with only one ship being worked in the port, but whether they heard quite what they wanted is arguable. Mr Rowling met one parochial question with his promise on the ferry; his statement an another — the “hot” issue of tolls for the Lyttelton road tunnel — was not as unequivocal as some of his listeners would have liked. “I have been hassled about the tolls since I arrived,” he said. “I haven’t been able to give Ann Hercus (Labour’s candidate for the Lyttelton seat) or the union executive the answer they want. I can say they will get. But I would be a liar to say that they would go on the day we are elected.” Mr Rowling toured the Lyttelton electorate during the afternoon, visiting pensioners’ housing blocks, local factories, and opening the party’s Lyttelton branch headquarters. In the evening he launched the party’s Lyttelton campaign.