THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, MAY 23, 1936. THE TRANSPORT FOG.

Wairarapa Age, 23 May 1936, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age SATURDAY, MAY 23, 1936. THE TRANSPORT FOG.

Much of the discussion of the Transport Licensing Amendment Bill in the House of Representatives has been of a disappointingly inconclusive kind. On both sides of the House there has been a depressing failure to approach the national outlook on ■ transport problems which alone will permit these problems to be handled with -advantage to the whole community. The legislation that is taking shape appears to be leading up, not to the control of all branches of transport in the public interest, but to the establishment of a queer kind of joint dictatorship by the Minister of Trans- ; port and the Minister of Railways. It is right and very necessary that Parliament should regulate and control transport by law, but no valid word can be said in support, or even in extenuation, of the proposals in the Transport Bill that all aspects of the application and enforcement of transport law shall be controlled in detail by a Minister or Ministers, and that appeals shall be dealt with only by the Minister of Transport, or by persons subordinate to him. So far as transport is concerned, the clauses of the Bill relating to appeals annul at a stroke all the rights and privileges of British citizenship, of which not the least precious is the right of appeal to an independent and impartial judicial tribunal. No more retrogressive and reactionary clauses than these have ever in modern history been laid before a British Parliament. While the members of the Parliamentary Opposition have been more than justified in attacking the appeal provisions of the Transport Bill, or rather the clauses in which a right of appeal, in any true sense of the term, is denied, their criticism of other aspects and details of the measure before the House has been on the whole confused and ineffective. Not content with attacking the Bill, some Opposition speakers appear by inference to have condemned any national control of transport. At all events, some of them seem to be intent less on wisely directed measures of control than on an anarchical lack of control. There has been much talk about the rights of private enterprise, but not as much talk as there should have been about the rights and interests of the community. One big question which ought to be kept in the forefront is whether the people of this country should be required to waste millions of money per annum, as they are doing at present, because transport is not efficiently regulated. Figures have just been made public which throw staggering light on the wastefulness of our present transport methods and the load they impose on the community. These figures show that the estimated amount spent on freight transport alone represented in 1925-26 eleven per cent, of the total national production, while in 1935-36 the corresponding figure was 17 per cent. In other words, the cost of a given amount of freight transport in New Zealand has increased in the last decade by over 54 per’ tent., and this in a period in which much of the machinery and equipment of transport has been improved out of recognition. There is no escape from the implication of these figures. They mean simply that in a period in which great economies in transport might have been effected, the actual costs of transport have been increased enormously on account of confusion and disorganisation. An escape from this calamitous state of affairs is to be found, not in the creation of the backstairs dictatorship now being proposed, but in an open and courageous treatment of the transport problem. A competent and impartial authority should be constituted and empowered to examine the costs of transport and other relevant details—-due regard must be paid to factors of speed, convenience and allround efficiency—and to regulate services accordingly. The aim should be to give the community the best and most economical transport services that are possible in the conditions that exist and with the equipment that is available. As little ■is to be said for continuing the pre'sent costly and wasteful confusion of transport as for conferring on the Minister of Transport, or on anyone else, the unwarranted and tyrannical powers proposed in the Transport Licensing Amendment Bill.