The Dominion. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1931. TRANSPORT BILL REACTIONS

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 291, 4 September 1931, Page 8

The Dominion. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1931. TRANSPORT BILL REACTIONS

At an almost perilously late hour public opinion is reacting against certain provisions of the Transport Bill now before Parliament. When the terms of the measure were first. announced, tentative approval was given to it because in principle it .sought to remove anomalies in traffic control the existence, of which was generally admitted. Principle, however, is one thing. The method of. its application is another, and it is to the methods proposed that criticism is now being directed, and properly so. Broadly speaking, these are too bureaucratic. Against any tendency to an intensification of the bureaucracy to which this country has already been made too subservient public opinion must be vigilantly on guard. It is a principle of democracy that local communities should be free as far as possible to work out their own destinies, and manage their own affairs. Serious intrusions upon this principle have been made by the general Government in deputing to the civil departments authority to make regulations by Orders-in-Council. Though this delegation of the powers of the State to bureaucratic authority is supposedly subject to Parliamentary supervision, the control is merely nominal. The fact that the Transport Bill is in effect another contribution to the forces, of bureaucracy is one of the grounds of the opposition now being raised against the , measure. The second ground of objection is that the Bill confers upon a politically-controlled board, any member of which may be dismissed by the general Government under the discretionary, authority vested in it by the Bill, ppwers of decision in matters which hitherto have been regarded, and should continue to be regarded, as within the special knowledge and judgment of local government. That is a valid and very substantial objection. It is a well-understood principle of action that no theory can be given general application without visiting injustice and hardship upon particular individuals or communities. New Zealand is not a nation of standardised communities, fashioned from bureaucratic copy-book patterns. There are, in each, special circumstances and conditions of environment which mould each community’s attitude, and influence its method of dealing with its own particular problems. The understanding of. these problems is clearly beyond the capacity of a remote. authority involuntarily compelled by its situation to reason by abstract theory. While it must be admitted that the State’s intervention in the commercial' activities of the people may be justified, and. even necessary in the general interest, it has to be remembered that in this particular connection the question is complicated by the fact that the State is the proprietor of a public service, the railways, the interests of which would undoubtedly be advantaged under the Bill. That very circumstance alone should put the Government, or its deputy, the Transport Board, out of court as an unbiased controller of traffic interests and adjudicator of the claims of local bodies. It may be argued, on the contrary, that the judgment of the local bodies themselves may also be warped by their vested interests in tramways, or by wrong opinions held by them concerning the principles upon which traffic of all kinds should be controlled.

This brings us to the fundamental question, which is that the Bill should be made sufficiently elastic in its provisions to provide for the contingent possibilities of error on either side. In its present form the Bill gives the advantage of position almost entirely to the Transport Board, and reduces local authority and initiative almost to a cipher. " '

Hence, while the general principle of the Bill is to be commended as an inevitable result of modern transport developments, care must be taken, and municipalities and the public should insist on this, that the authority and initiative of local government in this particular question are not completely effaced by the pretensions of bureaucracy.