SOME INSTANCES.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVIII, Issue 202, 9 August 1928, Page 8

SOME INSTANCES.

Take, for instance, the case of the electrical supply traders. When thqj Electric Power Boards Act was placed upon the Statute Book in 1918 it certainly never was intended that these traders were to be driven out of business by subusidised State trading. It was assumed that the supply authorities, save in exceptional circumstances, would confine their operations to distributing current; but no sooner were they firmly established than many of them began competing with the private traders in practically every branch of their activities. Supplied with cheap capital, freed from taxation, exempt from local rates, and with the goodwill of a benignant Government behind them, they started out with enormous advantages over their rivals. Yet the Public Works Statement of last year recorded that eleven of these boards had made losses on their trading operations and implied that others had failed to produce balance-sheets giving any intelligible idea of their transactions. Then there is the case of the pri-vately-owned gas companies in competition with municipal and State concerns of the same character. The Wellington Gas Company during the last six years has paid on an average £17,000 a year in land and income taxes, local rates, annual licenses and other charges, while the Auckland Gas Company during the same period has paid an average of £33,793 a year. Both these companies are in active competition with municipal concerns that are exempt from these heavy charges, and the fact that they hold their own under such conditions suggests that the State and municipal enterprises in New Zealand sadly require the same close investigation as Mr McCormack has appled to those in Queensland.