FEELING ON MALOLO

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 132, 2 December 1930, Page 9

FEELING ON MALOLO

DELAY IN BERTHING

UNNECESSARY REGULATIONS

"OVEREUN BY EED TAPE"

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "The Evening Post.") AUCKLAND, Ist December. Considerable feeling exists among the tourists on board the motor-liner £.'£alolo at what is considered to be the unnecessary stringency of Customs and health regulations in Australia and New Zealand. Both officers and passengers speak in strong terms of "petty annoyances and discourtesies" encountered in the Commonwealth, and the opinion is freely expressed that if Australia wishes to encourage her tourist traffic she is not going the right way about it. The time occupied in berthing the liner at Wellington, is. criticised. "We arrived at Wellington at 2.45 p.m. on Friday," declared an officer, "and the passengers were all dressed ready to go ashore, yet we were unable to berth until 5 p.m., and during tho^ intervening 2J hours all the passengers could do , was to walk impatiently up and down ,the. decks watching the daylight hours grow less. That sort of thing may be iiecessary in. the ease of the usual mail boats and immigrant ships, but it is ' totally uncalled for in the case of a cruise ship whose passengers are only going to be in a country for five days." The officers declare that in Australia £his kind of annoyance is twice as bad. STRICT POET REGULATIONS. "At Singapore we took on board an agent of tho Australian. Government," said one of ( the officers. "He spent the tiiuc on the voyage to Sydney very usefully issuing propaganda and information about Australia's attractions, but the whole o£ his work was ruined by the pig-headedness of the Australian health regulations, for when we got to .Thursday Island, where we stopped to lift a pilot who was to take us on to Sydney, what was my astonishment when a doctor came on board and demanded that all passengers should be paraded on deck at 6 o 'clock in the morning to show their elbows! By the time he had finished with us and we were permitted to proceed three hours had been wasted." . The officer was reminded that the American port regulations were generally considered to be the strictest in the. world. "I know that," he replied. "I admit our port authorities are a pretty 'hard-boiled'llost s but then we are not seeking tourists. You Australians and New Zealanders are looking for it. You send Government agents to my country and spend a lot of money'in advertising your attractions, yet you will not follow it up at home. The health of our passengers is assured from the start. They are not overcrowded. There is a tremendous amount of space per person; they have good healthy food, and we employ two qualified doctors to look after them. They are not going to stay in your country, but merely have a look at it and go away. Then why not make special provision to relax the regulations in their case?' EXAMPLE FOE COTJKTESY. "I suppose our passengers will spend A 10,000 in New Zealand in five-days.' /We are here, yet what do you do? Compel them to put all their dutiable, belongings under lock and seal in a room on the ship until we sail, as if any of them dreamed of leaving any of their belongings on shore. Even the sealing of the ship's bar is unnecessary, for all the duty you reap from it. If you want to know how to treat your tourists, I would commend you to officials' in Eurc^ and the Orient. My word, Japan is the place for courtesyon the part of Government servants; and that is the country our passengers enjoy travelling through most of all." The officers have less to complain about New Zealand than ' Australia, which they consider to lie overrun by "red tape officials." They'are particularly grateful to the New Zealand Government for granting the ship ■ a free clearance at Auckland, enabling her to come straight to the wharf without medical or Customs examination. "Tjhey would never diy>iin of doing that in Australia," said one officer. "There you get medical and Customs examination in every port you go into."