BRITISH SHIPPING

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1933, Page 11

BRITISH SHIPPING

A SERIOUS POSITION.

FOREIGN COMPETITION.

Wellington, July 10.

"The shipping industry is in a very bad state arid as long as we carry on with all these tariffs, subsidies to steamers by foreign nations and boycotting by various nations, we will never raise ourselves out of the mire in which we are at present, and we will never relieve unemployment or the depression in shipping,” said Mr. R. S. Dalgleish, shipowner and shipbuilder, of Newcastle-on-Tyne, who arrived to-day by the Maunganui from Sydney. Mr. Dalgleish, who is on a world trip, is an ex-president of the Chamber of Shipping of the United Kingdom.

Mr. Dalgleish said his tour had shown him thaf’shipowners were going in more and more for oil-burning and Dieselengined vessels, and that was a very serious matter for Great Britain and countries like Australia and New Zealand. “I state this,” he said, “because it means that the Home production of coal is not going to be utilised. Oil has to be imported and money is going out of the coal-producing countries instead of being used in them in the employment of labour. “Another serious matter at present is the competition of Japan, and Australia and New Zealand will have to wake up and meet this competition or it will become very adverse to them and also to Great Britain.

“I am surprised at the attitude of Australia in not allowing New Zealand potatoes to come into the country and thus cheapen the cost of living,” said Mr. Dalgleish. “New Zealand • has retaliated by not allowing oranges to be imported from Australia and gets a large percentage of her oranges from California. This is contrary to the spirit of Empire and I do hope that Governments will stop all this boycotting, because it only causes ill-feeling. I have yet to find that the Ottawa Conference has done any good in any part of the Empire, and I think that the sooner we get rid of the terms of the agreements the better.”