Labour T.A.C. plan attacked

Press, 14 March 1983, Page 10

Labour T.A.C. plan attacked

PA Wellington Labour's plan to abolish the Transport Advisory Council would restrict transport firms and inhibit the economy, the Minister of Transport, Mr Gair, has said. Labour’s spokesman on transport, Mr R. W. Prebble, said on Wednesday that a Labour government would replace the council with a New Zealand Transport Council with powers to “determine the transport made to be wholly or partly used to move goods and passengers in any region.” Mr Gair said that Labour’s intention was as revealing as it was alarming. Clearly the Government’s efforts to give the user choice of mode and allow the natural balance of the marketplace to find their own level would be cast aside. “Labour with its proposed New Zealand Transport Council suggests a quango with powers and influence which would in practice be far more restrictive to the operators and inhibiting to the economy than New Zealand has been since the time of the first Labour government,” Mr Gair said. If Mr Prebble were Minister of Transport the advisers he would want would be those who would rubberstamp a Labour government’s directives, Mr Gair said.

“Members of the T.A.C. under my chairmanship are free to speak their minds. Evidently Mr Prebble finds this unacceptable,” he said.