NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

On Wednesday the Minister of Transport said attempts to rationalise motor transport were, in a number of instances, “being frustrated by merchants and others putting their own trucks on the road.” Presumably he intends to drive these trucks off the roads. Although Mr. Semple may think’ it venomous or scurrilous—-his words—of us to say so. that is the obvious meaning o£ his remarks. Granting . that anyone who defies an Act of Parliament which other people have to obey deserves to be disciplined, there remains the objection that guilt or innocence in this connection is determined solely by the Minister. Even the most vigorous and emphatic of Ministers can make mistakes. One who sees in a merchant's carrying of his own goods an attempt to circumvent the Transport Licensing Act may be predisposed to mistake After all “merchants and others” pay for the roads: pay registration and heavy traffic fees, pay tire tax and pay petrol tax. If it sjjits their business, and as long as they injure nobody by doing so, they can surely be allowed to use their own trucks. Unless, of course, the Government's policy is to control everyone and everything everywhere. Will Mr. Semple say it is not?

Someone in the Cabinet or the upi>er ranks of the Public Service has seen a good opportunity and seized it. Mr. Maurice O’Brien, New Zealand commissioner at the Johannesburg Empire Exhibition, is to visit Tanganyika and Kenya after the exhibition closes, and investigate the growing and milling of sisal for rope-making bull and authentic information on this subject will be valuable under two heads. Sisal shares with Manila hemp, henequen and New Zealand flax the task of supplying the main cordage requirements of the world. Knowledge of the latest sisal milling processes may help us in milling flax; knowledge of the soils and treatment required for the successful growing of sisal may open possibilities of its establishment here. Its progress in British East Africa has been remarkable. Sisal heads the list of Tanganyikan exports, and contributes more than a third of the territory's export wealth: in Kenya it is second only to coffee in the table of export values. Y'ct the plant is not: indigenous to Africa; it comes from Mexico. Its introduction to New Zealand on a commercial scale would assist toward the needed diversilication of our primary industries, and provide some set-off for the establishment of New Zealand flax in St. Helena and Japan.