PRICES OF PETROL

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 259, 29 July 1937, Page 15

PRICES OF PETROL

* Automobile Association Urges Uniformity BURDEN OF COUNTRY MOTORISTS Dominion Special Service. Napier, July 28. Immediate efforts to bring about a uniform price for petrol throughout New Zealand are to be made by the council of the Automobile Association, Hawke’s Bay. The association’s proposals were submitted to the Hon. W. E. Barnard by Messrs. J. E. Peach and R. M. Chadwick for circulation among members of Parliament representing country districts with a view to enlisting their support for representations which will be made to the Government. Presenting the association’s views to Mr. Barnard, Mr. Peach pointed out that practically every product connected with the motor industry was sold at the same price from one end of the Dominion to the other. He instanced motor-cars, spare parts, tires and batteries, all of which could be obtained at the same cost in, say, Wairoa as in Wellington or Auckland. The same applies to standard proprietary articles in other lines of business, such as safety razors, cigarettes or beer. “The present system of selling petrol, under which prices increase according to the distance of the reseller from the central point of distribution, is not only manifestly unsatisfactory but a burden on all motorists living in country districts that is on all but those wiio reside in the four main centres,” said Mr. Peach. “A Dominion-wide fixed price would, it is felt, be welcomed by resellers and should not present any difficulty to distributors, to whom it should be just as possible to agree on a fair and reasonable national price for approval by the Government as it is to distributors of motor-cars. It is felt that the proposal made by the association will meet with unanimous support from all provincial districts, to whose residents benzine is just as necessary a commodity as to the inhabitants and businesses of the four centres.”