Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1929. A SCORE ON THE WRONG TARGET

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 53, 6 March 1929, Page 8

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1929. A SCORE ON THE WRONG TARGET

By labelling- (or libelling) the agitation against flat rate shipping freights as "centralisation," the advocates of the small ports have sought to seize a tactical advantage, and since Friday last they seem to have included among their recruits the Prime Minister, who has deemed it wise—in a statement at Napier—to accept and. use their phrase and slogan. The issue before the public is not "centralisation." The main issue is whether oversea shipping services should levy a flat rate of freight to all ports of the Dominion served, or whether freights should differ according to the efficiency of despatch and service. On 31st January, before the holding of the Harbour Boards' Conference (at which the smaller boards numerically carried the day against the bigger boards), and long before the Prime Minister's Napier pronouncement, the "Evening Post" put the point in the following terms: —

It seems to be waste of time to pour bullets into the body of such an abstract thing as centralisation of shipping. Each commodity, each ship, aud almost each occasion has to be considered on its merits, and to say broadly that centralisation is bad, or that decentralisation is good, has no economic meaning whatever. • There is some oconomie purpose, however, in saying that freights should reflect transport costs, and that if a flat rate of freight masks the true position, ,it is not serving, the community.

The point, then,, is not "centralisation," but whether there should be some proportion between transport costs and transport freights—whether the freight covering a port where a few tons are loaded slowly and expensively should be the same freight as applies to a large and efficient port where the handling of cargo is ' much more rapid, much cheaper per ton, and much less costly to the ship in the matter of interruptions, removals, and delays. Sir Joseph Ward did not say at Napier that he was in favour of continuing the flat rate,of freight. If he had done so, he would have said something. Instead of that he picked up the cue of the smaller port people and said, tijat he was against "centralisation." Thereby he said nothing; though he did succeed in making a political gesture. His bull is unmistakable, but it is on the wrong target.

Probably no one will dispute that this flat rate of freight is, in its character and effect, either less economic or more economic than a discriminatory freight. If the Prime Minister—and those whose cause he has, with clever terminological inexactitude, endorsed—will say that the former is more economic, and is indeed a sound transport principle, then again he has said something to the point on which issue may be joined; but if, admitting the flat rate to be less economic, he yet excuses it on the plea that the smaller harbours must be kept going, manifestly he is begging the question. The issue is the economic justice of the flat rate, not its value as a form of protection for small ports which cannot give equal service yet hope to enjoy equal rates of freight. Having spoken in such decisive terms about "centralisation" (an assumed after-effect), the Prime Minister owes it to the country to say in an equally clear-cut manner whether he stands for the thing in immediate view, the flat rate; and, if he stands for it, whether he does so because it is a sound transport principle, or because some harbours need the support of an arrangement that is not sustained by considerations of pure efficiency. In this way, and in no other, can the Prime Minister get down to tintacks^ If he thus starts off frankly at the beginning of the journey, instead of ringing the bell violently at some unknown down-line railway station called Centralisation, his audience will at least be able to follow his argument, whether it agrees with him or not, and to dismiss any suggestion that he has merely been swung, as the Harbour Boards' Conference was swung, to the party of numbers but not of weight. Both in Australia and here, "centralisation" has been more or less a term of contempt, and "decentralisation" a term to conjure with. But these ascribed qualities, which apply or do not apply according to circumstances, have no meaning in a specific discussion. If a flat rate of shipping freight is intended to give shelter to a secondary or a third-class port, and if— 7 in another sphere—f ares or freights by road are kept up to a maximum in order to protect one class of wheeled traffic from the competition of another class, then these 'charges should each be made known in its true character, which is protective rather than economic. Does Sir Joseph Ward favour the flat rate not because of its own virtues, but because he assumes that an economic system of freights would take business from the smaller ports? If so, can he see any parallel between artificially sheltering the smaller ports and artificially sheltering the railway system, which twenty years ago en-

joyed the aid of an embargo against electric trainrails being laid on the Hull road (an embargo of which Sir Joseph was the exponent if not the author) ? Does he agree that the railways, now more or less on a competitive level, .are healthier for the withdrawal of embargoes, and does he not think that the smaller ports might equally be benefited, and their loan accounts kept within reasonable bounds, by a policy of not too much shelter? In any case, whether he thinks that or not, does he not agree that it would have been unjust, twenty years ago, to. accuse ihe opponents of the then national railways' embargo of being antinationalisers; and that there is no more justice torday in the imputation that a movement against the flat rate is a movement for centralisation? In his second Prime Ministry, twenty years later, Sir Joseph Ward would certainly not attempt to renew # his Lraffic embargo over the Hutt road; yet the railways remain. And we venture to suggest that in twenty years' lime (if he is with us, and we hope he will be) he will not be found defending the flat rate under any specious alias whatever.