PETROL RESTRICTIONS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23770, 25 September 1940, Page 12

PETROL RESTRICTIONS

Sir, —T am married, with four young children; I have a position with a firm giving a service of national importance and of special value to its many thousands of farmer clients. For over two months I have vainly tried to get a special benzine permit to enable me to carry 011 my work for this firm. My applications, and also those of my principals, for a permit have all been refused, and no reasons given. It seems a secret conimittee governs the granting of permits, and this committee cannot even be interviewed —but exercises its autocratic powers entirely in the dark. There is, of course, 110 shortage in New Zealand of benzine for union organisers and union fee collectors, nor for the enormously swollen army of Government officials of every kind. But legitimate private enterprise, oven of real national importance, does not count.

To-day also every farmer I meet, and I meet many, is asking why Now Zealand alone should be called on to cut down its benzine consumption to the vanishing point, while Australia has a ration of two and a-half times that of New Zealand, and even in England motorists have a larger ration than wo havo in New Zealand. We all know there is a war on, but even the war hardly covers the present trend to turn New Zealand into an autocracy. Digger Last Time.