ATTACK ON DEPARTMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21773, 12 October 1932, Page 8

ATTACK ON DEPARTMENT

COMMISSIONER SEVERELY CRITICISED.

(From Our Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, October 11. A strong attack on the Transport Department aimed particularly at the Commissioner of Transport (Mr Hunter) made in the House this evening by Mr Henry Holland. Mr Holland claimed that the department was imposing hard ami unreasonable conditions on the Dominion s motor transport and urged that it should be incorporated in the Public Works Department. , , ~ , “ I notice with pleasure, Mr Holland began, “that the National Expenditure Commissiion has recommended that tne work of the Transport Department should be transferred to the Public Works Department. Whatever the failings and faults of the Public Works Department it could not have imposed harder or more unreasonable conditions than the Transport Department. I have always felt it my duty to stand behind public officers, but in this case I feel I must voice my feelings with regard to the Transport Department. As I have said, even the Public Works Department could not do more to cripple and ruin the country than this department has done._ The position is most serious and difficult. The operations of the department have thrown large numbers of men out of employment. Because fresh regulations are issued licenses have been refused to many owners of motors which have been running for years. They cannot sell or use their cars and these are thrown back on the vendors with loss of capital and loss of employment all the way.” Mr Holland instanced the case of a motor service running between Southbridge and Christchurch for a number of years. Although this service had never been involved in an accident it had been refused a license because a person standing outside a car could not reach in and pick up the fire extinguisher. He urged that such a condition as this was utterly absurd. In many other cases hardship was imposed, with the' result that purchasers of cars lost all their savings. Many thousands of pounds had been lost in this way and hundreds of people had been thrown out of work. He knew of nothing more heavily taxed than motor vehicles, which were said to provide 75 per cent, of the cost of highways. It was unfair and unbusinesslike that the Transport Department should come along and say to the people who had provided the roads that they must keep off them. Personally, he refused to believe that the farmers of New Zealand were so shortsighted as to use motor transport if more economical means were available. “I am more than satisfied that the Transport Department does not warrant its existence or the expense that the country is put to in maintaining it,” Mr Holland went on. “ I recently had occasion to write to the Commissioner of Transport about a very simple little matter. He wrote back a curt note saying he could not supply the information for which I asked. I think he could have supplied it if he had wanted to.”

Mr Holland said ho had in his hand a letter signed by four residents of Have lock which, he suggested, showed what kind of man it was who had charge of the Transport Department. He quoted from this letter a sentence stated to have been written by Mr Hunter, “ That if his department had not the power to stop the vehicle running he would see that such legislation was introduced this session as was necessary to do it.” When a petition was sent to the Prime Minister signed by over 600 residents of Havelock asking for a continuation of the service, the commissioner declared that the petition would have-no weight with his department in the framing of legislation for the coming session. A Labour member: He’s a bit of a Moses. Another member: Yon mean a Mussolini. “I think anyone who wanted more damaging evidence than this would be hard to please,” continued Mr Holland. “He warns a committee representing 650 residents that they have no hope of a better service and will get no consideration at his hands because they passed him and went to the Prime Minister, which was the only course they could take when he refused them.”