TRANSPORT LICENSING

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26227, 10 August 1946, Page 4

TRANSPORT LICENSING

AN AUCKLAND PROTEST Advice has been received by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce that the Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand have passed on to the Minister of Transport, in connection with the recent discussions in the House of local body matters, a report on metropolitan passenger transport licensing adopted at a recent meeting of the Council of the Auckland Chamber The report recommends that no owner and/or operator of a transport service should be a transport licensing authority; stressing that it is contrary to one of the best established principles of British justice that anyone should be judge and jury in his own case, as a local body becomes when it is itself a transport operator and at the same time is the licensing authority for its own and/or competing transport services. ” In Dunedin and Wellington,” the report states. "the metropolitan passenger transport licensing is in the hands of the city council, which is itself an operator. In Auckland the same licensing is in the hands of the Auckland Transport Board, which is itself an operator. The Christchurch practice (where the city council is the licensing authority and the Tramway Board the operator) is much to be preferred on the score of practical justice. The position has been aggravated by- the passing of the Transport Law Amendment Act. 1939, which brought taxicab licensing within the functions of the metropolitan transport licensing authorities.’’-