MELBOURNE SHIP-BUILDING TRADE.

Kumara Times, Issue 968, 6 November 1879, Page 4

MELBOURNE SHIP-BUILDING TRADE.

[AUSTRALASIAN.] One important trade in this port is in a very bad way. We refer to the shipbuilding and ship-repairing trade upon which a large number of men in Sandridge and Williamstown depend for their liviag. The Government is now asked by the member for Williamstown to give, if possible, this trade the coup de grace in the interests of native industry, and expresses itself as quite ready and eager to do so. We quoted recently some very definite evidence given before the Unemployed Board by a prominent Williamstown steamboat-owner as to the way in which the shipping trade of Melbourne is gravitating to Sydney. A correspondent of the Argus supplies the following testimony on the same subject; the high duties charged on articles required in fitting out vessels have had a depressing effect, while the new tariff now proposed will probably cause a still greater decline. In 1877, while 61 vessels of 4510 tons were built in New South Wales only seven, of 428 tons were constructed in Victoria. In the first named colony the duty charged on rope and cordage of all kinds is 2s per cwt., and all shipchandlery comes in duty free. In Victoria the duty on hempen and other cordage is from lls 3d to 28s per cwt., and on all other ship chandlery a duty of 25 per cent and upward is levied.” The correspondent alleges that the sailmakers, masand block makers, shipriggers, ship; builders, and shipchandlers are greatly injured by these prohibitive duties, which drive the trade toNewSouth Wales. Under these circumstances the trade is evidently in a bad way, and it would seem, to any but men blinded by protectionist principles, desirable to foster it, if possible. But the sapient A. T. Clark thinks it can be made to bear a little more yet, and the other day in Parliament suggested that means should be taken to check the practice of allowing boilers to be imported free of duty to be placed in steamers fitted at this port. The Commissioner of| Customs, with equal sagacity, said he wonld see to the matter, and probaly the result will be that the boilers will be stopped. Well, what will be the result? That steamship owners will patriotically pay the duty, or, still more patriotically, have them made here. This would doubtless be the case if they were unable to go anywhere else. But as the case stands, they can go to Sydney, where the shipping trade is already going, and get their boilers and all other requirement free of duty. So that the boilermakers will not get the work, and the shipwrights and fitters will lose what they at present have. And this is the way in which muddle-headed ignorance goes about the object of onouraging and fostering native industry.