General election issues: TOURISM/AVIATION

Press, 26 November 1981, Page 17

General election issues: TOURISM/AVIATION

Air New Zealand will face major structural changes if either Labour or Social Credit is elected to power on Saturday. Both parties firmly state in their policies that they would turn the airline into a corporation. National, on the other hand, would maintain the status quo. and place its continuing "confidence in our airline and its ability to succeed."

Labour's policy on aviation is the most detailed of the three parties. It reiterates the party’s doubts that the 1978 merger of N.A.C. with. Air New Zealand effected the economies and increased efficiences that have been claimed by the Government.

Labour has undertaken to investigate and evaluate the effectiveness of the merger, and to make public all reports relating to it. It believes that the National Airways Act (1945) provided a better structure for the country's national airline than the ordinary commercial company owned by the taxpayer.

It proposes therefore to reorganise Air New Zealand into a public corporation, operating under its own act with specific provisions for a public audit and the power of Ministerial direction to ensure “that the corporation establishes and operates, or continues to maintain, any air service or section of an air service specified by the Minister.”

The act would provide funds to support uneconomic services that were nevertheless considered necessary for regional or social reasons. Labour would suspend the fuel tax and domestic travel tax until such time as the airline returned to a position of financial stability. “Labour reaffirms that Air New Zealand’s internal air services, even on presently uneconomic secondary routes, must be maintained," the policy states. “Lacours regional development policies demand the maintenance of such services to provide for the expansion of freight and pas-