SHIPOWNERS DISSATISFIED

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 80, 13 April 1945, Page 4

SHIPOWNERS DISSATISFIED

RAILWAY FREIGHT RATES

Wellington, April 12. "We must be careful in planning the co-ordination of road and rail to see that nothing is done to impede coastal shipping from fulfilling its full function.” With this quotation from a 1944 House of Lords debate by Lord Leathers, British Minister of Transport, the New Zealand Shipowners’ Federation made one of its arguments against alleged unfair competition by the Railways Department when the hearing of the Rail and Coastal Shipping Committee was continued to-day. In a Jong submission the federation, on behalf of many small coastal shipping firms who are not directly represented at the inquiry, gave instances supporting its claims that the Railways Department had differentiated in its own freight rates in areas where they ■ were in competition with outside in’ ' terests. In addition, it made three * points of national features of the dis- ' pute for the consideration of the com--3 mittee as follows: - 1. The large number of personnel s ‘skilled and unskilled) employed in ? coastal shipping. 3 2. The large amount of money invested in harbour boards where losses fell on the local taxpayers: and also the large number of employees of those boards. 3. The need of a large pool of the smaller type of vessels, which was well illustrated in the first Great War of 1914-18; but which had been more forcefully illustrated, so far as New Zealand was concerned, in the present war. ‘ The shipowners would not feel so aggrieved where the need for their services disappears through the provision of other forms of transport, provided that the other forms are able t.o carry freight at rates which return a reasonable margin,” said the submission presented by the federation secretary, Mr G. H. Norman. “But the shipowners consider that there are many rates applied by the railways which are uneconomic and which appear to have been brought into being with the sole object of ousting coastal shipping. "It is generally accepted that coastal shipping provides the cheapest form of transport where reasonable cargoes are offering, and the basis on which the transport depends is a reasonable return to the service concerned plus adequate pay and conditions of employment to those connected with the industry. As private enterprise, shipping cannot compete against discriminatory rates applied by the Railways Department where these are uneconomic and where losses fall on the general body of taxpayers and interest on capital is met by the Consolidated Fund.”