GOVERNMENT SHOPS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19475, 9 May 1925, Page 15

GOVERNMENT SHOPS.

UTILISING THE RAILWAY STATIONS

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY. May 1. For a long time 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 remaned adamant, and have 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 tlie lament of the retail traders is loud in tlie land. Nothing, of course, will come of their protests, because the Commissioners are so firmly entrenched behind statutory Sowers as to hold almost despotic sway, ven a glance at some of the leading stations suggests that the retailers have good grounds for protesting. - The big; welllighted Sydney Central railway station today 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 tram 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 io enter into competition with shopkeepers, but the latter are undoubtedly suifering. At Milson’s Point, for instance, one can but buy almost anything, from a pound of prawns to a bouquet of flowers. The legality of the latest expansion of business bv the Commissioners will in all probability be tested in the courts, if the retailors’ 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.