MAUI POMARE’S SERVICE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 815, 8 November 1929, Page 8

MAUI POMARE’S SERVICE

UNCONVINCING arguments are put forward by the Industries and Commerce Committee of the House in support of its recommendation that the Auckland-Norfolk Island service should be eliminated from the Maui Pomare’s itinerary, and that future services maintained by the vessel between New Zealand and any of the Islands should he restricted at this end to ports in the South. Mr. H. T. Armstrong, who, in evidence before the committee recommended that Lyttelton and Dunedin should he made the vessel’s only ports of call in New Zealand, said in the blouse yesterday that if the vessel was to pay its way some of the present ports would have to he eliminated. This was in specific support of the committee’s tacit suggestion that Auckland should be cut out of the itinerary. The curious part of Mr. Armstrong’s logic, however, is that, according to figures supplied to the Auckland Chamber of Commerce in September, the Auckland-Norfolk Island service is the only part of the ship’s schedule that is paying. If Mr. Armstrong'is sincere in wanting to see the sflip show a profit, and does not wish merely to advance Southern interests at the expense of those of the North, he might make a very satisfactory start by retaining the Au.ckland-Norfolk service, the only service yielding returns that conform to his views. As far as the inward fruit trade is concerned, Auckland does not have to rely entirely on the Maui Pomare, and it will be conceded locally that Southern ports, not being served by any private shipping service, have a legitimate claim on the Maui Pomare in her capacity as a fruit carrier. The injustice arises from the fact that, since the institution of the Island services, Auckland has built up a profitable export trade. By the elimination of Auckland as a port of call on the Maui Pomare’s schedule, the merchants who have built up this trade will be deprived of the proper rewards of their enterprise. It is unlikely that they will he content to watch the business go elsewhere without some emphatic protest, particularly as the arguments employed by the committee are so contradictory. The committee claims to be anxious to put the Maui Pomare’s services on a paying basis, and then begins by eliminating the vessel’s only profitable run. Further it offers the argument that the Maui Pomare is a State ship and accordingly cannot be governed by a strictly business arrangement, hut must to some extent meet the benevolent requirements of a public institution. If either of these contentions is sincere, Auckland has an indisputable claim for inclusion in the itinerary.