Fruit for South Island

Press, Volume LXXXII, Issue 24896, 8 June 1946, Page 6

Fruit for South Island

It will be easy for the Canterbury Progress League to enlist the wide support it has decided to seek for an appeal to the Government to improve the South Island’s supply of fruit from the Pacific islands. The shortage is acute, and damaging. It is, of course, not confined to the South Island. The North Island, too, needs more fruit; and, commendably, the committee whose advice the league this week accepted sgw the wider problem when it recommended that the Maui Pomare be replaced by two new vessels with a combined carrying capacity three times as great. Commendably, too, the committee gave none of its time to argument whether the North Island is allocated a disproportionately greater share of imports. It is an argument which spokesmen for the Internal Marketing Division have, in the njain, answered assuringly The supply is, allocated “as fairly as “possible®, on the basis of island, and-island consumption before the war. But it is an answer that, as the Mayor of Christchurch recently emphasised, evades the real issue; and the league end its committee have not lost sight of that fact. However equitable the allocation, the distribution is certainly not as fair as possible. The North Island retajler gets bananas in much better condition than does the South. ‘ Often ”, the Mayor has said, “ half “ a cargo of fruit is rotten by the “ time it reaches southern centres “after delays and frequent tran- “ shipment in the North Island ” Accordingly, the league asks that, as an alternative to the commissioning of two new vessels, the Mauri Pomare be diverted to her pre-war service. That is. she would discharge at Lyttelton and Wellington; and the South Island would not have “ to tolerate the continued “ high railage and transhipment “ charges and the wastage attendant “on the lack of direct shipping ” The request is so eminently reasonable that the league is assured, in arranging a deputation to Wellington, of the widest support. But the merits of a ease, as the league has found in asking for ‘he removal of the Government’s seed testing station, are no guarantee of success.