Ordered-Transport.

“Anyone who cares to examine this building in all its features—its modern design, its care for the convenience and comfort of passengers, its broad platforms and open floor space, its facilities for the repair and servicing of vehicles, and its accommodation for the recreation as well as the work of the Department's employees will, I think, agree with me that even the most hardened advocate of private enterprise in everything would not have expected, in our time, to see a building like this provided here under a free-for-all dispensation of unregulated road competition. On the other hand, all will agree, I believe, that the facilities provided are not in excess of what should be given under any well-ordered transport system for the convenience, safety, and comfort of travellers.

“So the present building may be regarded as one more proof of the fact that, at least in the field of transport, private enterprise is not capable of meeting all public requirements,” the Minister said. “The corollary of this is, of course, that when the State, on behalf of all the people, provides the adequate facilities, then it is not reasonable that private enterprise should be able to exploit for private profit what it has required so large a measure of public expenditure to provide. This reasoning applies not only to the provision of adequate buildings for transport, but also to the construction of new roads through territory, such as that at Milford Sound through the Homer Tunnel, that private enterprise could not possibly have opened up.

“I have just come down from the opening of the Centennial Exhibition at Wellington, where the Railways Department's exhibit has attracted a great deal of favourable comment; yet there is nothing exhibited on the model railway there that is not already incorporated in New Zealand's national transportation system. And the fact that the miniature display there provided has proved so appealing to the public is as good an indication as one could wish that the railways, take them all in all, really are up-to-date and fit to play an increasingly important part in the life of the Dominion.”