DOMINION TRANSPORT.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4329, 31 August 1937, Page 3

DOMINION TRANSPORT.

CASE OP FARMERS. COMMENT BY ALLIANCE. The New Zealand Road Transport Alliance states:— According to a recent press report, a “definite assurance that the Government had no intention of imposing any restrictions on farmers using themj.own trucks for the carriage of thes produce,” has been given by th<? Minister for Railways (Hon. D. G. Sullivan). Without impugning the sincerity of this utterance as representing the present intention of the Minister, it is important to observe that the assurance is very limited (in its application and inadequate as a safeguard even within its limits. It may be the intention of the Minister for the time being not to interfere with farmers carrying their own produce, but no Government can bind itself indefinitely, and the present transport policy will not stay put where it may be intended to stop at the moment. If it should turn out that the carting by farmers of their own produce in their own vehicles is considered to operate adversely to railway revenue, there is little reason to doubt that restrictions will soon be imposed in one form or another to force them to employ railway transport. The assurance, which is limited in set terms to outward carriage of produce, is restricted to farmers. Does this limitation mean that it is intended to prevent the commercial ancillary user from operating his own goods transport in his own vehicles? The Minister should give a clear, explicit and unambiguous answer to the question asi to pvvheitpier it is proposed j to interfere with the carriage of I freight by road hauler’s in their own j vehicles. The restricted terms 1 of the i ministerial "assurance” lend color to the belief that such interference is ; actually contemplated at the present 1 time. The Minister also stated that “plans were in hand with a view to giving the public a flexible first- | class goods service.” This statement is equally vague and non-committal, i Does it mean the abolition of road motor transport and the transfer to the railways of the work at present carried on by the road motor industry? This is the natural interpretation of Mr Semple’s statement that 90 per cent of the present motor transport can be efficiently carried out by the railways. If it does not mean abolition of road transport, what does it mean? The road motor transport industry is already giving the public a

flexible first-class transport service, of a Hand which the railways, from their necessary restrictions, cannot possibly do, for purely technical reasons. The Minister has given no indication as to the nature of the “flexible first-class service” he proposes to substitute for the present admittedly highly elficA-at road transport industry, and the irresi-tible interference is that the motive for interference is the intention to bolster ,up, at the cost of users of freight transport, an uneconomic, expensive, inconvenient *i.J dictatorial railway monopoly.