The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1934. COASTAL SHIPPING.

Evening Star, Issue 21717, 11 May 1934, Page 8

The Evening Star FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1934. COASTAL SHIPPING.

It will probably come as a surprise to learn that the Transport Board is turning its attention to New Zealand’s coastal shipping services. Rightly or wrongly, the public and those directly interested will assume that this is being done in the hope of helping the railways, which, despite the publication of the improved results of the year’s operations ended March 31, are obviously still in need of help before they can regain tho “ standard ” of paying 3 per cent, on capital cost—all profits above that figure to be absorbed by freight and fare concessions to tho customers of the Railway Department. It was in 1929 that the late Sir Joseph Ward, then Prime Minister, announced that the Government had decided to constitute a Ministry of Transport, on the ground that a separate administration could give closer attention to the very difficult transport problems that had arisen. In its first report (1930) Parliament the Transport Board stated; “Before the advent of the motor the rail, tram, and shipping facilities had settled down to more or less definite spheres of activity. Now that motor transport has • been thrust upon the transport world, tho old equilibrium has been severely shaken. Railways are losing an increasing volume of business to the quickly improving motor transport; coastal shipping has also suffered; while special steps have been taken to guard the tramways against unnecessary and wasteful competitive losses of business.’’ The report goes on to mention that, whereas railways aro subject to very high standards of physical operating efficiency, and coastal shipping is also required to comply with standard time-tables, physical fitness, etc., motor transport, goods and passenger, functioned without any standards of time-table, mechanical fitness, etc. In the intervening four years, of course, all that has been changed. Successors to the original Transport Board- have seen scrupulously to that. In fact, the boot is on the other leg. Road transport concerns are now under rigid surveillance, and carry on under a set of regulations of mammoth dimensions, while both they and tho private car owners, now taxed on a scale hardly anticipated when “ coordination ” came into the vocabulary of transport, aro finding even arterial roads deteriorating because of the diversion of earmarked proceeds of taxation to the Consolidated Fund instead of the Highways Fund. In effect, revenue from road users is being applied to make up the annual deficits produced by the railways. Coastal shipping receives no such subsidy. It is distinctly the underdog. The Transport Department’s 1930 report states: “The advent of the motor and its expansion in the sphere of goods and passenger public services has increased competition between the railways and coastal shipping.” And a result of that competition is the gradual disappearance of shipping services with which we were familiar as children and regarded as eternal. Tho weekly East Coast service between Bluff and Auckland, calling at intermediate ports, is no more; neither is the short Invercar-gill-Dunedin sea route frequented as formerly. A, remnant of sea-borne trade remains between some South Island and some North Island ports, and because of Cook Strait no train or motor service can interfere with it. There are other contributing causes such as the substitution of petrol for oats and chaff as motive power for road transport, and the substitution of oil fuel for coal in stationary power plants, let alone tho development of hydro-electric power. Transport coordination has its motive in a desire for economy, for transport of all kinds is dearer than it used to be, and for some time past tho community as a whole is poorer than it used to be. It appeals to us to be a serious omission from the long list of duties and responsibilities devolving on the Transport Department by Acts of Parliament and Gazcttes-full of regulations that the economics of power produc-

tion for the propelling of vehicles is nowhere mentioned. It is regarded as highly important that New Zealand should bo self-supporting in the matter of wheat production, and the public pays a high price for its loaf in consequence. But the destruction of Southland’s oat export business to a point whore single tons are shipped north for every hundred tons that used to be shipped passes without notice. Onr main fuel is imported chiefly from countries very reluctant to accept goods in exchange, and as a consequence ill-spared money has to be sent out of the country, while coal mines work short time or arc closed down, @nd land which can grow perhaps the best oats in tho world is put down in grass to enable the farmer to participate in an industry which has descended to such depths that tho Governments of several countries profess to be stirred to their very foundations with concern, and in some cases, we believe, they really are.

The issuing of a questionnaire to coastal shipping companies seems to savour of straining at a gnat while swallowing a camel in such circumstances as those. In all tho railway departmental literature of tho past decade we have searched for references to coastal shipping competition with the railways, and the extracts given above are all we can unearth. On the other hand, the annual Railways Statements and tho reports of the various Royal Commissions and Ministerial programmes of improvements (including new workshops) teem with references to road competition, which has produced more clerkly essayists than any subject which has agitated New Zealand politics since their beginning, not even excluding land tenure. One would like to think that the Transport Board’s motive in the present case is a desire to help a fellow sufferer from road competition. But the mention four years ago that road traffic inroads had led to greater competition between sea and rail borne traffic rather damps down that charitable construction. However, that blessed word Scriptural “ Mesopotamia ” is being seriously challenged by that pseudoeconomical word “ co-ordination,” and we hope that our local shipping offices will fill in their questionnaire papers with the promptitude and good grace that should harmonise with a request so courteous as to voluntarily admit that “ the board recognises that the completion of tho questionnaire will involve quite a considerable amount of your valuable time. It is confident, however, that you will view the matter in the light of a public duty, and as a valuable contribution towards the solution of one of the dominion’s major economic problems at a crucial time.”