POWER BOARD TRADING

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1929, Page 3

POWER BOARD TRADING

ALLEGATIONS AND A REFUTATION

(Dy the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee.)

“It is well known,” runs a paragraph in a statement issued by the Electric Power Boards and Supply Authorities, “that* a very definite efforts is being made by the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committed through the Press to discredit the trading operations of power boards and to foster the idea with the public that the boards are trading unfairly. The obvious intention is to create a public opinion that will influence the politicians with the idea of getting regulatory legislation passed which will enable electrical traders to obtain control of that section of the trade which they now' supply indirectly through the power boards. Certain definite charges were made against the power boards and the first inclination of those connected with the boards was to immediately refute the statements made.” The Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee wishes again to emphatically deny these assertions of the “Electric Power Boards and Supply Authorities’

.Secretary’s Branch.” The committee is not endeavouring to discredit the operations of the power boards and it is not seeking to assist electrical traders in securing direct control of the section of their trade which now passes through the hands of the'power boards. It merely asks that power boards shall be compelled to trade under the same terms and conditions as do private concerns. It asks, for instance, that the boards shall pay the same rates of land and income tax; the same local rates and taxes;

shall be subject to the same laws and penalties as are private traders, and to the same arbitration and labour restrictions. It is asking for nothing that should not be conceded in equity and justice. For tho purpose of illustration this point, it may be pointed out that there are boards which confine themselves strictly to their intended functions of supplying power; then there are those which, in addition to supply power, sell a limited variety of electrical apparatus and fittings, and, finally, there are those which enter aggressively into competition in all branches of electrical trading. No exception can be taken by the private trade to the operations of the boards included in the first of- these classes. Their trading is perfectly legitimate. The boards comprising the second class have persuaded themselves that they will increase the consumption of

power by selling certain classes of apparatus. The third class usurps all the functions of the private trader, accepting sole agencies, refusing all recognition to competing lines, maintaining show rooms for all classes of electrical goods, and supplying their own wiring installations and every other requisite of the trade. This is the policy which the Right Hon. J. G. Coates described as ‘‘intolerable.” The three classes cannot, of course, be placed in the same category. The first, as already stated, is without reproach; the second is not a very grave offender, and probably would be ready enough to have its trading operations placed on a legitimate business footing and itself freed from reproach. It is the third class, as already mentioned, which needs attention in the interests of the public and

tho legitimate traders. So far boards of this class have been content to escape what criticism they may by hiding behind the better records of classes f and 2. They know perfectly well that their case and the cases of the other boards are entirely different. They are the boards which drew from Mr. Coates the fervent ejaculation “intolerable,” and no doubt Mr. Coates’s successor in the administration of the affairs of the country, having made himself acquainted with the facts, will take care that legitimate private enterprise is not throttled by unfair State trading.