JUST ANOTHER KICK AT PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

Stratford Evening Post, Volume II, Issue 89, 8 November 1932, Page 4

JUST ANOTHER KICK AT PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

COMMFRCIAL MEN CRITICAL OF TRANSPORT PROPOSALS "It is just another kick at that good old donkey, private enterprise," said Mr. H. S. E. Turner at the meeting of the Canterbury Chamber of Commerce in referring to the proposed Order in Council providing for the regulation of goods services under the Transport Licensing Act 1931. The Transport and Parliamentary Bills Committees of the, chamber are to confer and lake action over the proposed regulations.

Mr. A. C. Bretherton said that the proposal was apparently designed to help the railways, but the difficulty was that it would probably force private carriers off the roads. "The proposed regulations," he said, "are neither here nor there to most of us, if it were not for the* important principles involved." Mr. A. F. Wright thought that the proposals should be properly considered. They seemed to be framed in Ihe interests of the railways, and if the public was not careful it would find itself quite powerless.

Mr. W. Machin did not think the I members of the Railways Board were Ito be blamed for protecting their interests. The Government was to blame. The transport regulations were one-sided and designed to be a corrective of an antecedent evil. The chamber should try to galvanise the commercial community—which was probably too busy to watch for traps in frequently recurring legislation—into action when its interests were jeopardised. Some people were not aware of the disablement that would accrue to the transport people and the rest of the community. If seemed that the Government wished to put a crippling embargo on business. Mr. Turner said that the regulations were not the action of the board but of the Government. Very obviously the Government was trying to throw good money after bad. It was trying to show circuit road transport in the interests of the railway.