THE SOUTH AND SHIPPING

Southland Times, Issue 18971, 19 June 1923, Page 4

THE SOUTH AND SHIPPING

In another column we reprint the reply of the Union Steam Ship Company to the Southland League’s complaints about the shipping service between Australia and Bluff, the company defending its present time-table vigorously and arguing for the Wellington-Sydney run. The Union Company, it will be seen, states that formerly the service was from Sydney to Wellington, Bluff and Melbourne, returning from Melbourne the opposite way, but that the trade showed “a constant tendency to diminish until now it amounts to very little.’’ Unfortunately the company confines itself to this very general statement, and we have no means of discovering when and how it first found this tendency to diminish in the trade between Australia and the southerly New Zealand ports. The trade seemed to be good enough for a commercial undertaking until the war came on, and then it was that the connection between Bluff and Melbourne was severed. Naturally the removal of boats from the service brought trade movements to a standstill, and the renewal of the cargo service from Bluff to Sydney is too recent for it to have any marked effect on the revival of shipments. Coal strike difficulties, we are told, have hampered the Bluff-Sydney cargo service, and this has further militated against an increase of the movement of goods across the Tasman from Bluff. The Bluff-Melbourne service for passengers and cargo is presented to us as offering facilities every three weeks, but the direct boat goes to Melbourne actually every six weeks, the other running involving extra charges which are not conducive to travel or freightage by way of Wellington. In addition we find that the Moeraki coming south-about to Melbourne is often running behind schedule, and people from the north who might want to make a railway connection are irritated by uncertainty concerning the actual day of her departure. Can it be seriously contended that the present service amounts to a serious attempt to encourage trade and passenger travel ? The present arrangements are said to Eave been dictated by experience, but it would appear that the experience taken as the basis for the time-table was gained under abnormal conditions and in abnormal times, and the facilities now offered are insufficient to invite increases in trade. it is suggested that “if the former service had never existed it might have been argued that the provision of greater facilities would tend to create the traffic: as it is this cannot be said.” This is meant to be a ! crushing finale; but actually it cannot be accepted as anything worthy of notice until we have something more conclusive about the birth of this “tendency to diminish” in our trade. A glance at the comparative statement of shipping entered inwards at Bluff shows a marked falling-off from the outbreak of the war, and this diininution is apparent in intercolonial vessels. From this , we wonder if the explanation is not that the trade was sorely wounded by the withdrawal of the service during the war and has not yet had sufficient encouragement to make it anxious to recover its strength. Competition might prove an excellent tonic, but unfortunately it is not readily obtainable in the shipping world.