Protection of Oil Tanks

Southland Times, Issue 24592, 14 November 1941, Page 4

Protection of Oil Tanks

AT A MEETING this week the general committee of the Automobile Association (Southland) set on foot a timely inquiry into the progress of the fund established last July to meet the cost of camouflaging the Dominion’s oil storage tanks. To build up the fund all petrol users have been paying an additional halfpenny a gallon since July 11; and they were assured by the Ministerof Supply that, on the monthly volume • of sales at that time, sufficient money would be provided “within four or five months.” Petrol allowances have been reduced since July, and probably the present monthly consumption is below the figure on which Mr Sullivan based this expectation. But although the Automobile Association may draw no more satisfactory reply than this, it is quite right to raise the question. The extra charge of a halfpenny is an imposition on petrol users that should not be tolerated a moment longer than is necessary. It is not they exclusively who stand to gain from the protection of petrol supplies. That is a matter of national concern, an essential part of the Dominion’s defence preparations from which, if war comes to these shores, not one section, but all the people, will benefit. The cost should be met from the War Expenses Account, not I from the pockets of petrol users alone. If they have met it so far, with hardly a complaint, they are at least entitled to relief immediately the required sum is found. But the association has performed a more important service by calling attention to the failure of the authorities to carry out the urgent work for which the fund was established. The oil storage tanks at Bluff have not yet been camouflaged, nor, according to northern reports, have the tanks in any of the main centres. In their bright' aluminium paint they still represent a standing invitation to enemy raiders to shell the Dominion’s ports. How can the Government expect the people to treat the need for local preparedness seriously while it neglects this elementary precaution? Auckland and Wellington have been practising total blackouts, all coastal cities and towns have permanent partial black-

outs, Home Guards and E.P.S. workers are in training everywhere—yet the petrol supplies on which the Dominion’s whole economy depends are left, after 26 months of war, dangerously exposed to attack. It is a scandalous neglect, and one that should be remedied without delay.