TRANSPORT TAXES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 81, 26 November 1931, Page 6

TRANSPORT TAXES

™ N.S.W. POLICY question of public interest in ;; services ♦ :• BUSES TAXED OUT New Zealand is profoundly inter- ' ested in the New South Wales experi.iment in transport control, because ;tthat experiment has gone to an ex"treme. Three transport policies are possible in any country: (1) To let all •forms of transport— road and rail, : private and State — develop as they •.will, and fight it out in unregulated ; competition, regardless of whether " private road transport benefits by .public road expenditure or not; (2) to * regulate transport with a view to giv- . „.ing each form of transport its proper *;economic spbere, equalising public ;:charges on each form, and avoiding ,*;needless duplieation without utterly ; destroying competition — in short, co;,ordinat;on;4 (3) to destroy private :;moto3* competition by taxation, or by State embargo, thus giving publicly- - owned rail systems (tramways and •.railways) a monopoly or at least a -sheltered position, encouraging ineffii ciency, strikes, and employee-dicta-tion. ! In New Zealand there is a consid- ! erable body of opinion favourable to ' Nd. 1 poljcy, Survival of the Fittest " (or -Iiuckiest). There is perhaps a ;'larger body of opinion favourable to :;No. 2 policy, co-ordination. But if : there is any large body of opinion prepared to go the length of No.. 3 (Mon- ; opoly by Publicly-owned Services) it - has not been very determined or even •».vocal. But in New South Wales No. 3 has - become, in a flash, the established sys- « tem by order of Mr. J. T. Lang. * The plan adopted to eliminate private enterprise on the roads of the I Sydney metropolitan and suburban i area has been taxation — a form of Iprohibitory levy that at once stopped ' the leading motor-bus services and " idled their veh.'cles and men. .. Would Try Anything — Once A New Zealander cannot fail to be interested in the question of how JSydney residents regard this Lang coup. The proportion of people who would condemn it at first blush, on the prima facie ground that State -■expropriation of private services is inherently bad, is probably less in Sydney than in any other paxt of the world. An electorate that would give '■ Mr. Lang's promises a trial, when endorsing the Lang Government a year ' or two ago would give. anything a trial ' (at least once). So it is not surprising to hear that Sydney opinion has not vetoed as preposterous the •' confiseat'on of the bus services. Under date of 12 November the Australian correspondent of "The Evenlng •' Post" writes : • "Soxne people, and not Langites at tlxst claim, amid all the hullabaloo - over the*stoppage of Sydney's buses, that the Govexnment's attitude is strictly correct, since the public's . money is behind the trams, and that it is in the interests of the public shareholder:that the mail services should . be allowed to pay without the handicaps of private competition." "The . Post's" correspondent proceeds to " point out the superfipiality of such a judgment. Public as Shareholders It is in the interests of the public which is shareholder in rail services, and is it in the interests of _ -the- portion of the public that uses ^•"t ansport, to give publicly-owned rail • ..services a special sheltered sphere — " not a sphere' pre-determined by a . icareful study in co-ordination, but a II sphere roughly cut out by the-short-1 " cut method of confiseatory taxation llof buses? In stx'ike time have not ; ,the people — users and taxpayers — • ; ; wished to be saved from their own ;;rail services? And at all times have ; • there not been complaints, both by *-user and by taxpayer, that nionopolllistic or privileged transport is bad transport? t " What proportion of the population ..of Sydney is favourable to taxing out !,.the bus services (which employed. 1 'hundreds of men and spent over a •.•million a year) can only be guessed Lat. It could only be guessed at in TNew Zealand. But it is interesting ■ to recall that a few days ago the lchairman of the New Zealand Railway HBoard declared that "a responsibility *"rests upon the Railway Department i..not only to adopt a broad outlook to- * Wjirds its associates in the transport industry, but more particularly to give a sexwice which, by efficiency and economy, will facilitate the conclusions of the licensing authorities." Mr. Sterling claimed that the railJ ways are "the backbone of the trans- ■ .porfc industry." He did not claim that " they are lock, stoek, and barrel.