NZ Socialists Fasten Their Grip On

S. Pacific Air Services Plea for Fredom for Private Enterprise in Fiji

A FORTNIGHTLY air service between Suva and Labasa (Vanua Levu) was inaugurated with an RNZAF Sunder land on March 15. It is expected that the service later will become part of an in ternal airways network in Fiji.

The Sunderland leaves Laucala Bay (Suva) on alternate Saturdays at 8.30 a.m. and arrives in Labasa two hours later.

The return journey is made the same day,, the plane leaving Labasa at 2.80 p.m. and arriving at Laucala Bay at approximately 4.45.

The single fare is £4/8/8. No charge is made for children under 3, but children under 13 are charged half-fare. Passengers are charged, in addition, 1/- each at the Labasa end for water transportation be tween the aircraft and the shore, and a further 2/6 for taxi fare from the anchor age at Malau to Labasa. Passengers are allowed 35 lbs. of free baggage for a full fare.

It was announced that the service w 11 be operated fortnightly only on condi tion that at least 24 single passages are booked for each trip.

THIS Suva-Labasa service provides a good example of what a community has to submit to when it surrenders itself to a bureaucracy governed by Socialism. The service is being run by the New Zealand Air Force —which now appears to be a trading department of the NZ Socialist Government.

New Zealand has chased all private enterprise out of all air transportation in the Dominion —all lines there are now run by a Government-owned Airways “Corporation,” directed by Sir Leonard Isitt. They are efficient enough; but no one would suggest that they provide cheap transportation, or that there is any pros pect of fares and rates ever being reduced.

Too many 35-hours-per-week officials on high salaries!

THE Australian and New Zealand Gov ernments have the controlling voice in Tasman Empire Airways, which runs the busy sea-plane service between Sydney and Auckland. The single fare is £3O; and, at that rate, with scores of people (who cannot get steamer passages) jostling for berths, the concern must be making a huge profit. If private enter prise had been allowed a free run competition long since would have cut down that monstrous fare by from 30 to 50 per cent.

Now—apparently working under some Fiji-New Zealand agreement of which the public has heard nothing—the NZ Gov ernment is running sea-plane services to Fiji, and other services from Fiji on to Samoa, Tonga and Rarotonga. The Auck land-Suva fare for the 9-hours’ flight is just under £30 —which clearly is exces sive. But there is no competition, by air or sea, except the overcrowded “Matua.”

You take it or leave it bureaucracy doesn’t care.

Now we have this Suva-Labasa service, again run by the übiquitous New Zea landers. The latter will not run the flying-boat, even once a fortnight, unless at least 24 people pay £4/8/8 each—they want £lOO, each way, for a flight of a little over 100 miles!

IT is suggested that this may become part of an internal airways network in Fiji. It is hoped, for Fiji’s sake, that it does not.

In the world, to-day, there are thous

ands of competent young airmen, and thousands of good, serviceable planes of moderate size, who could provide the Colony of Fiji, and other Territories similarly situated, with thoroughly effi cient air transport services, designed to give people the quick and convenient transport they want, at much less than the rates charged by the slow-moving, over-staffed, top-heavy, expensive organi sations so typical of Government enter prise.

Let the Government of Fiji throw the Colony’s air internal transport system open to private enterprise, controlled by competition and not by Socialists, and Fiji would get a service to Labasa much oftener than once a fortnight—and at much less than the present rates.

OUR babbling politicians insist that these State-owned 'instrumentalities are designed to protect the citizens against “exploitation.” But invariably, they provide the public with services that, in comparison with privately owned organisations, are less efficient and very expensive. There is no better example than the State-owned railway systems of Australia. In comparison with American

or British trains (before nationalisation), Australian trains not only lack the usual amenities—they are comfortless, dirty,

very expensive, and usually operated at a loss.

The only way to get cheapness and effi ciency in any kind of public service is to leave it to private enterprise, with proper safeguards against monopolies and exploilation. Fiji should compare the charges made by Mr. French, for running his little plane on hire between Nausori and Nadi, with the charges and thd arro gant demands of the NZ Air Force, for flying-boat between Suva and Labasa, The moral is plain.