Statement on ferry freight ‘hard to believe’

Press, 2 October 1982, Page 23

Statement on ferry freight ‘hard to believe’

Parliamentary reporter

The Railways Corporation should open its books for a joint investigation by freezing works management and trade unions into the concessional rates across the Cook Strait, says the member of Parliament for Papanui, Mr M. K. Moore.

Mr Moore has been campaigning against a Railways Corporation concession which allows livestock to be sent from the South Island on the Cook Strait ferries at discounted rates. Mr Moore. said that he found a statement by the general manager of the Railways Corporation, Mr T. M. Taylor, that only seven trucks of Canterbury livestock had been shipped across the Cook Strait this year "hard to believe.”

He said that he had been told that as many as 200 pigs were being sent to the North Island for slaughter each week.

Mr Moore quoted from this year’s annual report of the Pig Marketing Association, which referred to a greater intake of South Island pigs being killed at the Longburn freezing works near Palmerston North. This saved “expensive freezing, storage, and later frozen carcase cartage to the North Island,” the report said. South Islanders were paying a subsidy to take pigs from the South Island to the North Island. Many South Island freezing works were finding things difficult.

“We can kill stock cheaper, our industrial relations are better and we are more efficient. We just ask that everybody be put on the same basis,” Mr Moore said. He said that the inquiry should look into other subsidies and concessions which

could mean that South Island raw materials were being sent north for processing.

Mr Moore said that he planned to put a series of questions to the Minister of Transport. Mr Gair, to try to find out the real situation with the transportation of livestock to the North Island.