COLONIAL AND IMPERIAL POLICY IN CONFLICT.

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 15, 18 July 1905, Page 5

COLONIAL AND IMPERIAL POLICY IN CONFLICT.

New Zealand's Shipping and Seamen Act 1903, which consolidates the previous law and represents the most advanced legislative expression our maritime policy has as yet reached, did no-fc receive the Royal Assent till March last. This Bill, and the Australian Navigation Bill now before a. Royal Commission at Home, have clearly (vide our London letter of Saturday last) afforded the Home Government some anxious reflection, _j much so that even thejtardy assent to our 1903 Bill has tacked on to it a despatch from the Secretary for the Colonies declaring that the time has arrived for a conference of United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand "with the object of obtaining as much uniformity as is feasible in shipping legislation, and of removing ambiguities, which lead, or are likely to lead, -to litigation and confusion." This seems almost like assent under protest, and throws a flood of light on the worries of those whose task it is to harmonise the aspirations and co-ordinate the Acts of an Empire divided up into self-governing seclions. DIVERGENCIES— IN DETAIL AND ON PRINCIPLE. For in maritime policy, Australasia tends to break with the Old Land not only in machinery details, but ako in principle.^.'One who, from experience and association, is a leading authority on the trend of maritime legislation m the co-lony in the past ten years, gave a Post reporter a few samples of the differences of detajl and policy between our 1903 Act and its Imperial parent, the Merchant Shipping Act 1694, and herein is presented a summary of his facts and opinions. The Shipping and Seamen Act 1903 provides that a man must be a naturalised British subject before he can sit for his certificate. "Previously, an alien, if otherwise quahfied, could pass for master mariner's certificate; it is a good step to ensure that pur certificates can be held only by British' subjects." The 1903 Act also- provides that foreign vessels which trade on the New Zealand coast shall pay the same rate of wages as our coastal shipping pays. Thess are two of the points of departure, and indicate a significant divergence of polipy." In this, as in other things, our policy tends to protection, the Old Country's to freetrade. FAIR WAGE PROVISION INEFFECTIVE. And the present divergence must become wider, unless one party or the other takes an entirely new line. To be effective, our provision as to payment of coastal rates of wages by foreign shipping, while on our coasts, must go farther. At present it is simpiy blank" cartridge. Reason : A foreign vessel, say a Noruegian, engages its foreign crew for the voyage. A voyage may lun two or three years, and may include every sea in the world, and the master need not, under the articles, pay his men till he reaches the final port of discharge — gets back home again. There ia no power in our 1903 Act (nor in the Imperial Act of 1894) to compel him to pay his men periodically. So when the Customs officers inform him that while on the coast he must pay coastal wages, he simply endorses a«ross h}s articles an agreement in writing to pay the crew the rate demanded, and this endoi'Gement is made under protest When he returns home he repudiates it, says he acted under force majeure, and successfully invokes the protection ~ of his articles and his own laws. Thus he escapes payment, and the Act in this respect is but paper. THE CONSEQUENCE.— A COASTAL PROHIBITION. Where does this lead to? "To be effective, it must be nothing short of direct prohibition to foreign shipping to trade between coastal ports, as is the case under the' American navigation laws." Direct prohibition is the only way to prevent unfair competition "by low-paid foreignowned ships and crews, and the only way I to protect and develop New Zealand coastal shipping. But is it going to stop ' with the foreigners? The logical development of the Bame- policy will be to restrict the operations of British-owned ten thousand ton floating warehouses from ! tramping round our coasts. Example:' One of these big Home steamers recently came" to Auckland, and discharged part of her cargo there: discharged part in Wellington; then went to Lytfcelton or Dunedin, and finished discharging ;_ then to the Bluff to peddle a bit of mutton ; a little more at Timaiu ; she hawked some at Picton,»some at Wanganui, and more at Waitara, and then returned to Wellington to fill up. "All tlia,fc m«it-collecting might be supporting a coastal fleet carrying it up to them." , POSSIBLE RESTRICTION ,OF HOME COASTAL TRAMPS. ' The British ships do not pay our rates,, while on the coast. Our Act applies only to foreign vessels, and the British-owned are under the Imperial Act. . They pay about £3 a month wijihout overtime, r.s compared wjt)a our £6 10s aucj. overtime. So this British Competition is also inimical to our aspirations for a better New Zealand coastal sliipping, which does not sho\. nearly the advance it should hive made during the last decade, and the floating warehouse tramping from port to jjort along the coast' is the cause. To make the beat results and to keep the trade in their own hands, the big shipping companies have an arrangement under which freights a-re pooled — that is, lumped up and equalised all round, so that people who have expended large sums to provide a good and sufe harbour have to pay the came freights ng people who offer only oven roadsteads and dangerous shelter. The East Coast runholder, with surfboat and all, gets his wool to London for the same freight as the LotrerHutt farmer who ships via Wellington. So logically our restrictive policy must nin> at tlie British as well as the foreign coastal tramp. WANTED— A LINE OF LEAST RESISTANCE. How is this going to harmonise with Homo policy? How are contraiy policies to be reconciled, and how are protective Australasia and freetrade Great Britain to find a common line of least resistance ? "It is just as ticklish v theory as the Imperial Zollverem ; this is a branch off that, only more so." The qualitative and the quantitative viewpoints eland sharply opposed — on the one side the ideal of a wellpaid coastal trrde, on the other that of a world-wide business to be maintained by freedom from lestnotion. Uniformity could scarcely mean the survival of the colonial policy, for that ivould be the tn'il wagging the dog. But is complete uniformity needed? Cannot our Imperial Conference find a middle line of action, reserving enough freedom for either party to give scope to its own genius? "Great Britain ought to bo prepared to obey our laws while on our coast." Such a compromise might be attainable, and it is well worth trying for, as tho Now Zealand and Imperial Acts now differ Jn sundry details of penalties and liabilities, and there is

great need of equalising the Shipping Acts of various parts of the Empire, and defining Iheir respective scopes.