The Coastwise Trade Bill.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue 243, 12 November 1903, Page 4

The Coastwise Trade Bill.

The London Times re-publishes tha following from the North German Gazette :—"The Government of New Zealand has introduced a draft Bill which, according to newspaper reports, is intended to penalise Germany and the United States by shutting out their shipping trade from the coast of New Zealand because, it is claimed, these countries are ruining the trade of New Zealand between that country and Honolulu, Samoa, and the Philippines. When the Bill was introduced, Mr Serfdom, the Premier, is reported by the New Zealand Herald to have declared that New Zealand steamships found free ports in these regions, while Samoa was under the joint control of CJ reat Britain, Germany, and the Minted States ; but that from the moment when Great Britain made over her rights to Germany and the United States Pago-Pago was closed to New Zealand vessels by an American law and Apia by Germany. We ' are able to state that the contention regarding the exclusion of New Zealand vessels from Apia is entirely without foundation. As may be discovered by any one who refers to the Keichskursbuch, or to the advertisement section of the Sanioanische Zeitung, the vessels ol the Aew Zealand Union Steamship Company visit Apia at regular intervals of four weeks, exactly as they did in the time of tho triple administration. '