GOVERNMENT SHOPS.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 15 May 1925, Page 2

GOVERNMENT SHOPS.

UTILISING RAILWAY STATIONS. For a long time Sydney retail traders have resented strongly and in emphatic terms the intrusion into their business of the Railway Commissioners. They have protested in vain against it. The Commissioners have remained adamant, and hav© set up the plea that, in opening up all sorts of businesses on their railway platforms, they are only catering for the needs of the travelling public. But * their enterprise, to the pecuniary advantage of the railway revenue, and to the advantage of many people who go on to the platforms, but not to travel, and who ordinarily would shop and have their meals elsewhere, is growing daily, and the lament of the retail traders is loud in the land. Nothing, of course, will come of their protests, because the Commissioners are so firmly entrenched behind statutory powers as to hold almost despotic sway. Even a. glance at some of the leading stations suggests that the retailers have good grounds for protesting. The big, welllighted Sydney central railway station to-day is practically a shopping centre, and the fact that people go along to it at night for meals, for example, even at the expense of train rides from the other end of the city, is notorious. The new Milson’s Point station, on the North Shore line, is another example of the intrusion of the Commissioners into retail trading. Perhaps the Commissioners have no desire to enter into competition with shopkeepers, hut the latter are iindonbtedly suffering. At Milson’s Point, for instance, one can buy almost anything from a pound of prawns to a bouquet of flowers. The legality of the latest expansion of business by the Commissioners will in all probability he tested in' the courts, if the retailers’ association stands behind the angry shopkeepers in one of the suburbs. " The retailers feel that they cannot compete on equal terms with the Government Commissioners with all the wealth of the railways behind them.