THE PETROL RESTRICTIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24417, 1 October 1940, Page 6

THE PETROL RESTRICTIONS

It is estimated by the Motor Trade Federation that the imposition of the restrictions on the consumption of petrol is costing the Government a loss of £1,857,000 a year that would otherwise be yielded by the tax on the commodity. This is a substantial sum and the fact that it is being sacrificed illustrates more forcibly than anything else can the seriousness of the view taken by the Government of the effect which a relaxation of the restrictions might be expected to have. For the Minister of Finance is in constant need of money in order that the Government may be able to prosecute a programme that has been adopted by it without any due regard to the circumstances of the moment. It must be galling to him to forfeit the large amount of revenue which, collected at a minimum of trouble to the State, would accrue to the Treasury if there were no rationing of the supply of petrol in the Dominion. Nor, it may be supposed, can he be indifferent to other consequences of the maintenance of the restrjictions that are in operation. The motor industry is one of the most important in the Dominion. Tire caoital invested in it, upon which there can in existing circumstances be no adequate return, amounts to a very large sum. It gives employment under normal conditions to thousands of men, of whom larae numbers must have been, or will be, thrown out of work by reason of the, restrictions. . These are considerations of undeniable weight. The Government has been adamant, however, in refusing to be influenced by them. It is, from its own point of view, unfortunate that it has not faced the situation with a frankness corresponding with its resoluteness. The motoring interests have complained of evasiveness on Mr Nash’s part in the replies with which he has met their representations. The Minister is given to evasiveness, as other sections of the community have discovered. If. instead of clouding the whole issue in torrents of words, he had confined himself to a plain statement that the need for the conservation of dollar exchange, arising out of the huge purchases of war material that are being made by the British Government from the United States, is influencing the action of the Government in the Dominion he might have, and probably would have, escaped some of the criticism that has been directed against him. There would still remain, as grounds of contention, the fact that the Government in Australia has not thought fit to impose restrictions as drastic as those in force in New Zealand and the additional fact that the bulk of the petrol importations comes from the Dutch East Indies. These are points upon which the motor industry has not failed to enlarge. Nor can it ignore the inconsistencies of which the Government is guilty. The Government is not observing

the economy in the use of petrol that is being enforced by it on the owners of commercial and private vehicles. It continues to maintain State bus services on roads running parallel with State railway lines.