LOSS TO AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1936, Page 16

LOSS TO AUSTRALIA

TRADE WITH TAHITI

Mr. W. M. Reid, a director of Robert Reid and Co., Ltd., who recently returned to Sydney, said that the discontinuance of the speedy, and regular steamer service which has existed lor so many years between Australia ana Tahiti might mean a cutting-down in the volume of supplies which go to that island from Australia. Until 1931. said Mr. Reid, Australia exported very little to Tahiti and the outlying islands of the eastern Pacific. All their imports were from Europe, U.S.A., and a little from New Zealand. Since then, their confidence in Australian goods had gradually been increasing, until latterly every steamer had carried hundreds of tons from Sydney to' Papeete, which helped to improve the employment situation in this country. Mr. Reid said that it was understood that in future a cargo steamer would leave Sydney every four weeks for Tahiti, but buyers' orders would take longer to reach Australia than to reach U.S.A., and the return journey of the goods would be longer from Sydney, because of intermediate ports, than from U.S.A.