The Wairarapa Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1934. EMPIRE SHIPPING.
Some particularly pointed observations on shipping questions immediately affecting New Zealand and Australia have-been made of late by the Hon. Alexander Shaw, chairman of the P. and O. Company. As Mr. Shaw remarked in Wellington on Monday, the domestic shipping problem between Australia and New Zealand is a thing apart from the general question of howbest to counter high foreign subsidies and should lend itself to separate and speedy solution. The position as it Stands is extraordinary. Highly subsidised American ships are allowed to engage freely in trade between Australia and New Zealand, while British ships, registered in the Pacific Dominions or anywhere else, are excluded rigorously, not only from American coastwise trade, but from trade between the Hawaiian Islands and the United States. In his shipping relations with the Pacific Dominions, Uncle Sam is taking everything, including a great deal that these Dominions need not give, and giving nothing. The present ordering of shipping in the Pacific might stand as an example for all the world and for all time of a one-sided deal. In allowing this state of affairs to continue, our own Government and that of Australia are as seriously at fault as if they were allowing pirates an unchecked run in plundering British ships, or in raiding British territories. It must be supposed that the Americans are not only astonished at the foolishly generous treatment extended to their shipping in Empire domestic trade, but regard with some contempt the apparent inability of the people of Australia and New Zealand to uphold and defend their own elementary interests. ’ This particular part of the Empire shipping problem evidently may be' solved as soon as the people of Australia and New Zealand grow tired of submitting themselves abjectly, as Mr. Shaw has said, to American shipping exploitation. There are other aspects of the same great problem that are and will be very much more difficult of solution. Mr. Shaw said recently that “if British shipping is to be lifted out of the decline that has been in evidence during recent years, an Imperial shipping policy is vitally necessary.” This being admitted freely, it remains to find a basis on which an Imperial shipping policy may be established. From this standpoint, the existing state of affairs evidently leaves a great deal to be desired.
Throughout the slump which, is now I beginning; to lift, for example;. Hew Zealand has been paying almost as 'much for shipping service,, ton. for ton 'and carcase for carcase, as she paid in the boom years that followed.! the war.. The cost of shipping service has remained virtually as High as- ever in, a period in which the price of export produce has been divided by three. In part this, huge cost of shipping, service is due to the tremendous disparity in bulk and weight between our exports to Britain; and our imports from that country. The trade is almost, of a oneway order, and one-way shipping trade obviously is and must be uneconomic. Looking’ well ahead, factors of this kind cannot safely be ignored. Admittedly we cannot quickly reduce to any great extent our present extreme dependence on one-way shipping transport, but it would surely be foolish to assume that this lop-sided development *of shipping trade must continue indeand. cannot gradually be modified The position evidently must be modified l . progressively if any sound and economic basis is to* be found for the development of Imperial shipping, and - what is more important, for the development of - the- countries that Imperial shipping is or should be organised'to serve.
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Wairarapa Age, 14 February 1934, Page 4
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602The Wairarapa Age WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 1934. EMPIRE SHIPPING. Wairarapa Age, 14 February 1934, Page 4
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