The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1929. HAIL THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 567, 21 January 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND MONDAY, JANUARY 21, 1929. HAIL THE MINISTER OF TRANSPORT

IT is one thing to create a Minister of Transport, and another to A make his task any more than a sinecure. As a piece of showmanship, the United Cabinet’s decision to establish a Ministry of Transport may win premature applause from admirers. But to justify it as a piece of practical statesmanship, Sir Joseph Ward will have to find something better than the platitudes with which he announced the innovation on Saturday.

Motorists will naturally ask themselves what advantage the new Ministry will serve. It is difficult to give any satisfactory answer. As long as the two great phases of motor administration remain in the hands of two separate departments, the Transport Ministry can only be a superfluous intermediary—a sort of buffer between dissatisfied motorists and the Public Works Department and Postal Department, which are the two departments at present charged with the heaviest responsibilities of administering the motor laws and regulations.

If the Transport Department could take over the work now handled by these two' fa r greater departments, there would be some justification for its existence; hut it does not seem fundamentally possible for it to do so. As long as large staffs, clerical facilities, and public offices are required for a brief period in the year, as they are demanded of the Post Office under the present registration system, it will not be feasible to place the collection of the fees and levies in the hands of a subsidiary department which lacks the necessary resources. To give the Transport Department the “loan” of the necessary facilities and personnel, would be merely begging the question, and the actual practice would he no different from the practice of the past. Similarly it would be palpably impracticable to take the immense respqnsibilities of road maintenance and distribution of subsidies out of the hands of such a splendidly-equipped organisation as the Public Works Department. Yet the road work carried on by the Main Highways Board under the wing of the Public Works Department is essentially allied to the interests of the motorist. A. transport administration in which these enterprises have no place can be little more than a mockery. “Motor traffic has attained such huge development that the necessity for systematising and controlling it must he obvious,” says Sir Joseph; hut the same can he said of motion pictures, the radio, and a number of other popular institutions. Every great trend of popular fancy brings its problems, but the Government—beyond collecting its taxes —should remain passive unless there is a clear and imperative call for it to take an active part. There has been no such call for a Ministry of Transport. The intangible and insubstantial nature of his responsibilities will accentuate the difficulties of the first Minister, but fortunately this fledglingwill not be his only care, and he will be able to conceal his embarrassment behind his other official concerns.

If the Government were going into the motor transport business on a large scale—if it were taking over the sporadic motor-bus enterprises of the railway department, or the undertakings of private service-car systems—there would be some justification for the existence of such a Ministry. There is a Minister of Transport in England, an inconspicuous dignitary who is not thought important enough to have a seat in the Cabinet, and who comes into the limelight only when there is a railway strike, and private transport units have to be mobilised. There is a chance that the Minister of Transport in New Zealand may be able to justify his existence by becoming a champion receiver of deputations, and that ultimately he may become of some importance in dealing with motor-omnibus licensing. Otherwise he will just have to sit back and wait for a strike.