MAKING ENDS MEET.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20289, 23 December 1927, Page 11

MAKING ENDS MEET.

MR BAVIN’S DIFFICULTIES. INCREASED FARES. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, December 15. The public,-which usually submits so meekly to all the burdens heaped upon it, has through the columns of the press emitted a wail of protest from one end of the metropolis of Sydney to the other against the increased train and tram fares. The new Premier (Mr Bavin), for having adopted this method of the Railway Commissioners of trying to make ends meet, has incurred quite a lot of odium. The fact that he has to solve the position created by the previous Government’s financial orgy, does not count. The public has a notoriously short memory. It is crying out, loudly and bitterly, that, with more rigid and justifiable economy in the public services, that with the abolition of a lot of the pequisites of parliamentarians, for example, and that with far fewer concessions to railway employees who are enjoying award rates and privileges not -accorded to private employees, the necessity for increased fares could have been avoided. War especially has been proclaimed, if one may judge from the protests in the papers, on w T hat are called the “dead heads” in governmental and political life. There is no night but hath its morn, however. The agitation on the part of the public may awaken the Government to the fact that the public can be fooled some of the time, but • not always, and that any policy on its part of laissez faire, as far as rigid economy is concerned, will count against it when it asks for another lease of life. Even the Nationalist press, in its leader _ columns, is telling the Government plainly that higher fares are, after all, only a temporary expedient, and that the problem of finance must £ave as its driving force economy, consistent with efficiency. The Government, it is understood, proposes during the coming recess, to try to reorganise the railways. The non-paying lines in New South Wales are a-terrible incubus on the railway administration, which has had many of them forced upon it simply for political motives. Tbc Government is in favour of making these non-paying railways a charge upon the consolidated revenue, but it has been pointed out to the Government that if this is brought forward as a new way of paying old debts, it will be well to examine it. Queensland, for example, rightly or wrongly, is pointed to as a State which pays its railway losses out of land and income tax. The fear is expressed that the general taxpayers may be charged with the same burden in New South Wales, instead of the loss falling upon those who use railways. The railways are certainly fighting a losing battle with the motors. As is pointed out, were the railways privately owned, the public could watch the struggle bettveen the two forms of transit with a certain measure of unconcern, but with about £100,000,000 of public money locked up in the railways, the position is somewhat different. New South Wales and Victoria appear to bo faced with precisely the same problem, and in exactly the same circumstances, with regard to th* railways. Each, without increased fares and freights, is faced with the certainty of a staggering deficit. It was not until the new Government came into office in New South Wales that there leaked out the memorandum which the Railways Commissioners put. before its predecessors, just before the election, pointing out plainly that fares must go up. Much the same tiling seems to have occurred in Victoria. So far as New South Wales is concerned, the press and the public have made quite articulate their opinion that the problem of railway and tramway deficits must he tackled at the root, and must not he met by the more simple expedient of taking more money out of the , people’s pockets.