MEMBERS' FREE PASSES.

Ohinemuri Gazette, Volume XXXI, Issue 4131, 16 June 1920, Page 2

MEMBERS' FREE PASSES.

The practice of members of Paivh'ameat accepting free passages on the ■Wellingtqn-Lytteltou ferry service is thoroughly unsound in principle and should be discontinued. It appears to have been drifted into gradually in the course of years and to have developed without due consideration. Members are obliged to travel frequently on pubMc business, and, after having been provided with free passages on the railways .they doubtless find it irksome to have to dip their hand's in their pockets every time they cross the Strait. It is a public inconvenience that the intev-ioland steamship services are not part, and parcel of the railway system. In the British Isles the privately-owned railway companies have in almost all cases found it profitable to run their own cross-channel services. Had the New Zealand railways been a private enterprise the same step would doubtless have been taken here years ago. I.t is one that must come. In the meantime i.t is extremely inadvisable for our members of Parliament to accept pecuniary favours from the Union Company or any other com pany. They must be prepared -xsuffer the same inconveniences as their constituents from the lack ot facilities for through booking from point to point between the two islands. It may be some consolation to them to know that it is proposed to raise their pay during the coming session.