THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1980. Lyttelton looks for support

Press, 11 August 1980, Page 16

THE PRESS MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 1980. Lyttelton looks for support

The Canterbury Manufacturers’ Association has a responsibility to its members and their , customers to help them secure the cheapest and most reliable transport for the import of raw materials and; for the dispatch of finished products to markets outside the province. A further responsibility can be added: workers in Canterbury depend for their jobs on markets being found for the goods they make. If transport costs add unduly to the costs of products, markets will dry up and people will be out of work.

In sending goods to the North Island, and. in . importing from there, Canterbury firms have been giving increasing preference to the railways and the Cook Strait ferry link at the expense of. coastal shipping. Shipping from Lyttelton has come to be regarded as. expsenive, infrequent, and unreliable for many purposes, even though the railways and the Picton-Wellington ferries do not always provide a satisfactory service. For most freight it is simply the most economical and convenient service.

The tonnage. of freight moving in both directions between the South Island and the North Island by sea or by sea and rail is declining. Last year it was down to 656,000 tons for SouthNorth freight, a drop of more than 100,000 tons on the figures for 1974-75. Traffic from North to South declined even more in the same period — down from 937,000 tons to 754,000 last year.

Many reasons might be adduced for the decline. Manufacturers are showing more interest in exporting beyond New Zealand than in selling in'markets elsewhere in the country which are expensive to service. Perhaps something like the local self-sufficiency of colonial days, when isolated settlements had no alternative but to fend for themselves, is being-forced on South Islanders by the costs and uncertainties of interislanid freight movement.

The Lyttelton Harbour Board also has a responsibility to its customers and supporters, the people of Canterbury, to provide the best service possible. The more cargo it can attract through the port, the greater its revenue and the better its sendees are likely to be. The board would be : failing its duty if it did not encourage use of the port, but it cannot expect, the operation of Lyttelton to be viewed in isolation from other means of moving freight. Coastal shipping has declined because less freight is offering.. Less freight is offering, perhaps, because alternatives are cheaper and more reliable. The result is an unfortunate cycle and the harbour board is caught in, the middle.

i y The board has objected because thA)rnanufacturers’ association, which represents some of the board’s major customers, has not supported the introduction of a weekly return service to

Wellington using one of the Cook Strait ferries. No new evidence has come to light to suggest that such a service would be used to capacity, or that it would be economic. Surplus capacity exists now on coastal shipping linking Lyttelton and Wellington.

Another direct sea link between Lyttelton and Wellington would look more attractive if it could be shown that diverting freight from the railways would reduce the Railways’ Department’s enormous deficit .— at present running at something- like §200,000 a day. In fact the railways would be unlikely to lay off staff or be able to reduce many other costs if a little more freight were moved by sea. The service that was proposed would also be operated by the department and would almost certainly increase the department’s losses.

. .The manufacturers have suggested that a modest improvement, in the services available at Lyttelton would be provided by a new link span to allow the Cook Strait ferries to use the: port when the railway between Christchurch and Picton is closed. This would give a useful flexibility to the use of the. Cook Strait ships, although the harbour board might find the service would be so seldom used that the span would not-pay for itself. Either it would have to be subsidised by other users of the port or the emergency equipment would have to be charged in some way to the regular ferry and railway service.

Apart from coastal shipping, the port continues to play a vital part in the province’s links with the rest of the country and the world; but like , some other industries, shipping in New Zealand has been going through a long period of restructuring and changes in the services sought from harbour boards are part of that process. Manufacturers who find their products are no longer competitive and who face declining demand are generally, not being sustained in uneconomic operations by expensive subsidies. The same rules might well apply to the services provided by harbour boards. To increase traffic through Lyttelton by support from taxpayers for uneconomic coastal shipping would help no-one in the long run. Canterbury manufacturers, through a series of frustrations and experiments, have gradually worked out the kinds of transport which best serve their needs, and the needs of their customers and consumers elsewhere in the country. In the process they have taken advantage of the enormous subsidy which the railways receive from taxation. Perhaps that places ships, and ports, at a disadvantage, but matters would not be improved by moving the subsidy from one moderately successful inter-island freight service and applying it to another with little assurance that it will be popular or reliable.