TOURIST TRAFFIC

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23181, 20 April 1945, Page 4

TOURIST TRAFFIC

Views Of Railway Clerk (N.Z.P.A.) WELLINGTON, April 19. "I would not stop tourists from coming here, out, 1 wouid not attract them, ' said Mr H. Trewoy, a clerk in the Railways Department, in supporting before the Royal Commission on Licensing today the contention mat the licensing law should not be altered in certain directions to provide for overseas tourists.

Tourist traffic was unnecessary to New Zealand, he said. The country had great resources in its pastoral land with which to earn a living without tourist traffic. Tourist traffic encouraged avarice in that it encouraged tradespeople to charge for services what the tourist would pay rather than what the service cost. It encouraged a state of mind which held nothing inviolate. For example, it had been suggested that the grave of Donald Sutherland, the pioneer of Milford Sound, should be cleaned up as an attraction to tourists at Milford Sound, there being no question when the suggestion was made of honouring Sutherland. The traffic encouraged jealousies, one section of the community being in. clined to feel it was not getting its fair share of the trade, a feeling which had given rise to a suggestion that the South Island have a separate Parliament. He believed the tourist traffic discouraged youths from going on the land by getting on example from the state of a get-rich-quick policy. The last evil of traffic was its effect on the Maoris. Between the Maori and pakeha there had been an unwritten agreement that they should co-operate in catering for the tourist traffic, but it was the Maoris who had had the rough end of the stick and had to do the singsong and dancing. The late Mr Justice Alpers had written in “Happy Yesterdays’’ that the Maoris had been degraded into cadging showmen.