WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1937.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 34, 3 November 1937, Page 4

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1937.

THE RAILWAYS UNDER LABOUR. Owing to the late date at which the parliamentary session opened the Railways Statement for last financial year, presented yesterday by the Hori. D. G. Sullivan, is like other departmental reports, a good deal behind^time. So f^r as the broad figures are concerned they were made publie mpnths ago, so that there is nothing very fresh in them now. However, they and what the Minister has to say about them afford material for a little current comment, if only in the light of hap'penings during the six months that have elapsed since the close of the year to which they belong. In the first place, despite all the fine things that Mr Sullivan has to say about them, it is matter of common knowledge that our State-owned railways have for years now been an y* thing but a paying concern, inasmuch as they have failed to earn interest on the cost of construction. What is not perhaps so generally known is that since the present Government took office the loss thus incurred has been very substantially increased, and that, too, notwithstanding the much better times we are enjoying and the consequent greater business actiVity. Under the Railways Board,. at-the very depth of the depression, the net earnings of the railways for the year lQ,-,^., . were sufficient to provide 1.65 per cent. towards payment of interest on their capital cost. However, with times then already begi'nning to show improvement, the next two years saw this increased to just about 2 per cent. But for the first full year of a Labour Government's administration the figure fell back again to 1.65 per cent.", although the general recovery from the depression had markedly udvanced — owing, so we have been told time and again, to the change of Government. The result was that for that year the taxpayers had to fihdsome £157,000 more than in the Coalition Government's last year, towards payment of the full interest. For the year now more than half gone the Finance Minister has budgeted for a further drop of some £200,000, which will also have to come out of the taxpayers' pocket. This * means that, if Mr Nash's estimate is realised, the total amount to be exacted from the general body of taxpayers to bolster up this State service will be something over £1,600,000. As a mattep of fact, figures recently published for the first half Of the current year suggest that it will be a good deal more. What it will be by the time the further millions now being spent on South Island and other unwanted lines are added to the capital debt, it is of course, impossible to say, but we may rest assured that it will be something much more than merely appreciable. In this connection it may be worth while noting that, according to the General Manager's report, it required in the year i936-37 a staff increase of about 3,000 extra hands to produce these sadly reduced earnings. By how many more the staff has since been increased we are not yet told. Thus boiled down to hard and readily understandable official figures this is surely a very s'orry record for the Labour Government's two years of handling this single State undertaking. It i's certainly quite sufftcient to give rise to "furious thought" as to what the condition of affairs will be when, g,s is the Labour Party's avowed but just now carefully suppressed aim, we have "all means of production, distribution and exchange" gathered into the hands of the Government. And anyone with eyes wherewith to see canpot but realise that this process is already in pretty rapid progress. Another little point may be noted in passing- While Mr Sullivan is lauding the State railways to the sky — the customary Labour "limit" — and declaring that all competing means of transport must be suppressed in order to drive custom onto them, some of his ministerial colleagues have been cursing previous governments with bell book and candle for borrowing the money wherewith to build them. And stiil Mr Nash continues to borrow most of the money Mr Semple is spending so lavishly in the South Island and eisewhere, though he steadfastly refuses to tell us definitely from what sources he is get-^ ting it. They certainly are a queer lot these Labour Ministers of ours. Each tells us- just what suits him for the moment, no matter how inconsistent it may be with what a colleague, or eveq he himself may have said a dMy or two earlier. As a regretful voter for them at the last election puts it succinctly, "they are, surely enough, a dandy lot of shifters."