Mr. Herries (Bay of Plenty).

I am pleased to see that this gentleman also takes the right view of the so-called offer made to me. He also pointed out that I could not lay down a goods tariff, and that the Minister must have known this. "An Hon. Member" interrupted him with the question, "Did he (Mr. Vaile) have access to the books page 18 for the passenger traffic?" Mr. Herries rightly replied, "No." It however happens that this was not necessary, although Mr. Maxwell asserted that it was. As regards "ordinary passengers," all I required was to find out what was the relative proportion of first to second-class passengers, what was the average fare they paid, and what was the average distance they travelled. All this I could, and did, get from the public records, and Mr. Fife's table absolutely proves that I solved this somewhat difficult problem safely and successfully. It also proves that Messrs. Maxwell and Hannay, with all the officers and records of the Department to help them, utterly failed to master it.

Give me the same information as regards the other items of coaching and goods traffic, and I will undertake to as successfully work out a tariff for these items; but I say it would be easy to prove that since the advent of Mr. Maxwell we have never had a General Manager who could do this. They knew all the difficulties, and hence their persistent attempt to force me into proposing a goods tariff without the necessary information to work upon. This unreasonable demand cannot be made, and is not made, in the public interest. It is made in the hope that through it the Stage System may be discredited and destroyed.

Mr. Herries suggests that I should be appointed Traffic Manager of the Auckland Section. I should hardly like to take the responsibility of this position, seeing that I do not understand traffic management; but possibly some arrangement might be made by which I could be associated with the Traffic Manager. All that I ask for is such a position as will enable me to see that the experiment is faithfully carried out, and that the new system is not ruined by pretended improvements by men who have given such emphatic proof that they know nothing at all about it.

Mr. Herries is quite right in saying that no business man could possibly look at the so-called offer made by the Minister. This is merely a repetition of that made in 1888—with another impossible condition thrown in—and I repeat that Messrs. Maxwell and Hannay then knew as well as I did that it was absolutely impossible for me and my friends to comply with the conditions laid down. Had I last year been allowed to question Mr. Ronayne, it would have taken me a very few minutes to make him admit that this was the case.

To show that this talk about the immense cost of the rolling stock is all bunkum, I may mention that the charge in the United Kingdom between the various companies, one with the other, for the use of each other's rolling stock is as follows:—1st class passenger carriages, ¾d. per mile; 2nd and 3rd class, ½d. per mile; every other class of vehicle, ½d. per mile. These charges are of course for the use of the whole vehicle, and not per passenger or per ton.

page 19

A trial on the Manawatu line would not test the system. It does not tap sufficient sparsely-populated country. I do not want it to be said that a section was selected that gave the Stage System an undue advantage. I am not a bit afraid of it on the most unfavourable one.