CONTROL OF RAILWAYS

Taranaki Daily News, 8 August 1930, Page 4

CONTROL OF RAILWAYS

BOARD OF DIRECTORS DESIRED. . CIIAAIJ’.ER OF COMMERCE ACTION The control of the railways by a board of directors free from political influence was urged by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce in a letter to the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce last evening. The Taranaki Chamber held the matter over for consideration at the annual meeting on August 20. The letter stated that the president of the Auckland Chamber (Mr. M. Stewart) had submitted the following resolution to the Prime Minister: — "It Is resolved that the chamber forward at once to the Prime Minister its considered opinion that the only means of satisfactorily solving the many difficulties which at present face the railway system of this Dominion, and especially of converting it into an effective service paying its way on proper commercial lines, lies in the direction of at once, divorcing it from political control and interference and placing control under a commission or board - of directors. This is urged at present inasmuch as such a question appears to lie outside the order of reference submitted to the Royal Commission on the Railways.” The resolution was merely a reiteration, said Mr. Stewart, of the view of the chamber formulated two years ago and approved by the 1929 conference of Associated Chambers of Commerce of New Zealand. At that meeting it was decided to urge the Government that ail State enterprises should be organised and conducted as trade corporations upon the usual basis somewhat after the manner adopted in the case of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and the Canadian Government Merchant Marine, Ltd. A further resolution was passed that in order to place the railway and other State trading departments on a true commercial basus it was desirable that they should be entirely free from political control. Mr, J. R. McGregor said one weakness was that if a board of directors was appointed the expenses of the directors would be very heavy, probably the salaries alone would altogether, amoinit to £5OOO.