I wish to move the following amendment—

1. (1) raising the cost of living, which will bear heavily on the lower and middle income groups;
2. (2) driving up cost structures and slowing down the rate of economic growth;
3. (3) threatening the precarious existence of certain marginal mines, which could lead to distress and unemployment; and
4. (4) penalizing all railway users severely;

and generally pursues policies which subject the wider interests of the country to the narrower interests of the Administration ”.

Sir, in my preliminary remarks last Wednesday I made the following points. First of all that the railwaymen more than deserved the increase which they got in wages. For many years we of the United Party have urged that their increased efforts should be properly rewarded and we are glad that this has at last been done. We would have been prepared to face even the unpleasant need for an increase in railway rates to pay for this increase in wages—if such an increase had been absolutely necessary; if that had been the only way out. But we believe it was not the only way out and we will try to prove that contention to-day. Secondly I tried to show that the rates increase was uncalled for. On Wednesday I outlined heads of argument to prove that railway rates were raised almost capriciously and with ill-judged haste. I believe too, Sir, that the Minister has done the railwaymen an injustice by suggesting that the cause of the increase in rates was his need to yield to the insistent demand of railwaymen for higher wages. He even dragged the poor pensioners into his argument. Last Wednesday the Minister said that if he had not increased tariffs he could not have given them their belated increases of some R1, 200,000 in the coming year. This type of argument gives the less thoughtful section of the public an image of the railway worker which is not fair. It should be realized by the public that the railwaymen have earned their higher wages by consistently increasing their productivity. Their incomes are not princely, even now. The railwayman has not held the country up to ransom. It is the Minister who holds the monopoly of a vital and essential service; who uses his railway transport monopoly to hold South Africa and every section and sector of our economy up to ransom. I think the public should also be told that it was quite unnecessary to raise railway rates in this way and to use the railwayman’s needs as an excuse merely to inflate what will be an already satisfactory surplus. The Minister said that he had promised an increase in September “if nothing unforeseen happened ”. Well, Sir, what did happen that was unforeseen? Nothing, except good news for him; nothing, except that he found himself with inflated revenues which could have paid for those increases. Therefore, or in spite of the fact, he rationalized salaries and wages and raised them by under 6 per cent on an average. What we are more interested in knowing is why he increased railway rates by 10 per cent simultaneously if, as he said, “nothing unforeseen had happened ”? Indeed, as I have pointed out, the only unforeseen happening here is—and I quote the Minister again—that “traffic had increased and revenue was higher than had been expected ”. Why then did he raise the rates? He has given a number of reasons—no, not really reasons; he has made a number of excuses all of which seem to me to be very flimsy.

The first excuse is when the Minister says “up to the end of August I only had a surplus of R4,400,000 ”. Therefore, apparently, he felt he would face a lean year ahead. The Minister failed to tell the House that he had already collected R7,150,000 more than he had expected to end the year with.

His second excuse was this: “Unless I had raised the rates the year 1963-4 would have shown a deficit of more than R21,000,000” (instead of an estimated deficit of only R250,000). Then comes this touch of pathos: “This would have ruled out the grant of much needed financial relief to railway pensioners.” I would like to know how the Minister arrives at that figure. Of course it is only of academic interest now that he has actually raised the rates. He foresees, as he says in this Budget, great progress. He is planning and spending for increased business. For the ensuing year he sees great things ahead. He knows that this year he could have paid for the increased wages out of the increased revenue without increasing rates. Why does it not apply to next year too? Is there any reason, except mismanagement by this bad Government to be pessimistic about our economic future? The Minister should really consult the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council occasionally. Maybe he could get some good advice from them in future. I think he should consult somebody with the necessary knowledge before he makes long-range prognostications of this sort. “But,” says the Minister, “the full impact of rationalization will not be reflected in the current year. It will be more costly next year.” Yet in answer to a question by me, he said, “The extra costs of the wage increases this year will be exactly the same proportionately as next year ”. (That is an average of about R1, 750,000 per month.) One of these statements must be incorrect. Perhaps the hon. Minister in his reply will tell us which one is correct!

His third excuse was this: If I had not increased rates, I would have had a deficit, at the end of the financial year, of about R2,650,000. He failed to tell the House that he had budgeted for a deficit of R2,750,000. If he had not panicked, if he had taken sage advice (for example from the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Committee) I can imagine, when he announced a deficit of merely R2,650,000, his self-satisfied smile as he would have enjoyed telling us in his Budget speech this year, in place of one he has just made, something along these lines—

If he had made a speech more or less on those lines, after having refused to raise railway rates, one could not have gainsaid him his triumph. And do you know, Mr. Speaker, what he then would have done? He would have sought Parliament’s approval, constitutionally to use the Rates Equalization Fund to write off his deficit. He would not have said: “What can I do? This deficit is caused because I rationalized wages and salary structures. It is illegal to do so. It is unconstitutional to do so.” Which brings me to the Minister’s fourth unacceptable excuse for raising railway rates. His fourth excuse had to do with the Rates Equalization Fund and it is twofold. In the first place he says: The rate increase in September 1962 would have exhausted the fund at the end of 1964. I leave the House, Sir, to toy with that unusual prognostication. Secondly, he said: “Any deficit caused by rationalization of wages and salaries on the basis of work determination could not be taken out of the Rates Equalization Fund.”

I think we should get this very clear: in the absence of specific parliamentary appropriation, the Railways could not have used the Rates Equalization Fund specifically to grant benefits or increased wages to the staff. We all know that. The accepted practice of Railway finance, as the Minister knows, over a number of years has been to get parliamentary approval by way of appropriation in a Finance Bill. In that Bill the Minister disposes of his profits as well as his losses. If he had a deficit of R2,750,000 (as estimated) the Minister would have followed routine practice and charged it to the Rates Equalization Fund to avoid increasing the rates in the next year. Remember, Sir, that expenditure can go up, as the hon. the Minister also knows, and cause a deficit, for various reasons; overheads can increase because of increased cost of stores; or materials; or services; or rationalization of salaries and wages. Remember, too, that in any year, whatever the circumstances, traffic must fluctuate up or down, between one rate and another, regardless of the general trend of profit or loss. Now then, at the end of any year, even one in which staff benefits have had the effect of increasing overheads, the Minister can operate on the Rates Equalization Fund with the special direction of Parliament by the usual means of a Finance Bill. This Bill not only approves of expenditure but specifies the source from which that expenditure is to be defrayed. The hon. the Minister is guilty of sophistry, he is quibbling when he advances this excuse for increasing tariffs that “it would have been illegal for me, under the circumstances existing, to use the Rates Equalization Fund to make good my deficit” (if indeed that deficit had been incurred). We have clear proof now that a deficit would not have been incurred; in fact the Minister has budgeted for a R 10,400,000 surplus. The only thing essential in this case would have been parliamentary appropriation, of which the Minister was assured. He should not only refer to the Select Committee Reports of 1945 to reinforce his arguments. He should also refer to the Special Report of 1948.

May I ask him a question in this connection, which perhaps he will be good enough to answer in his reply? What will he do if he has, as he has estimated, a small deficit next year? Can he take it out of the Rates Equalization Fund, even though, as he says, it will have been caused by the wage and salary increases of last year? What a curious financial pickle he is getting himself into? Does he argue that in future he can only write off that part of his deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund which is not due to the rationalization of wages or to an increase in wages? And how is he going to determine that figure? No, Mr. Speaker, I suspect that the Minister knows that he can get Parliament, in a Finance Bill, to do everything that would be necessary. So the last reason for raising railway rates in such an untimely and damaging way is without substance. Everyone can make suggestions, and good ones too, as to ways and means which he could have employed to avoid increasing rates so hurriedly. Surely he could have waited one or two months to watch the trend of his Revenue and Expenditure Account before setting in motion an upward spiral of living costs and production costs for manufacturing, mining, commerce and farming. If he had waited just one month, he would have found, in the first month of increased rates and increased salaries, that he had a surplus of over R500,000. In October, the second month, he would have found that he had no less than R3,400,000 surplus. Even after the usual bad December, which showed a deficit of R500,000, he had a surplus of over R9,000,000, and actually had already made up, at that stage, in extra earnings more than what the increase in wages and salaries would cost him for the whole of this financial year. He then still had three months to go and if his past miscalculations are repeated, even on a minor scale, he will find himself with a much greater surplus than he estimated last Wednesday. He will probably have half as much again.

I ask the Minister then: Why did he not wait? He himself in previous years, whilst resisting demands for increased pay, has given as the reason his great reluctance to do anything to increase costs and increase prices, and so upset economic progress and drive up the cost of living. Those are the sort of things he said when he resisted wage increases in the past. He has been very eloquent on the subject, Sir. But now, when there is no need to increase the rates, and when the only effect of his increased rates will be to swell his own surplus, now he has no consideration for the welfare of the country at large.

To sum up, I have three faults to find with the hon. the Minister on this issue: One, that he should have known from his financial position that a raise in rates was quite unnecessary. Two, that if he had any doubts, he should have either waited for a few months, or raised rates by a lesser amount. Three, that he neglected to ask the advice of economists and of organized industry and commerce on the probable effects of the untimely increase in rates.

Sir, I have never concealed my admiration for the Minister’s achievements, in this House and outside. But I have always regretted one flaw that I see in his line of thinking. It is a serious drawback. The hon. Minister always acts as if the Railways were a law unto himself: as if the Railways were an entirely separate entity, completely disconnected from the rest of our economy. I have more than once told him that this attitude of mind is especially dangerous where he is in charge of a colossal monopoly concern. He seems to be so supremely confident of his ability to manage his own affairs that he disdains to take advice from outside people. He has been forced to take a lot of good advice from this side of the House, but he refuses to consult with outside bodies of ability and standing. And this in spite of the fact that his past results have shown him and his foresight to be faulty and his accuracy to be doubtful. I think that he should pay more attention in future to the country’s good rather than the Railways’ profit. I know that he has a poor opinion of economists. We remember his summary rejection of the findings and recommendations of the Viljoen Commission’s Report. He called it “superficial” and he adopted the attitude that “they were naturally wrong and that he was certainly right ”. He has adopted exactly the same attitude towards the Prime Minister’s Advisory Committee. He said that he would not allow anyone to teach him his job. He knew his own job far too well. He never even thought of consulting them, he said, although they were meeting at the time when he was considering raising the rates. He dismissed the very idea of consulting them with unnecessary contempt. I think the Minister will yet live to regret the fact that he did not take advice from those who might have saved him from making an impetuous and costly mistake which will bear heavily upon the progress of South Africa.

The third leg of the amendment which I have moved deals with this threat which increased rates has caused to the existence of certain marginal mines. There are other members on this side who are more competent to deal with this matter than I am. But I can say that I have knowledge of at least one mine which at present spends millions of rand on goods and services; which pays out considerable sums of money to its workers and is indeed a very good customer of the Railways. Examples of mines in this position could undoubtedly be multiplied. This mine I mention is, of course, handicapped by the fact that its product has a fixed price, and it is mining low-grade ore. It is teetering on the brink of payability. Other hon. members on this side will show that the recent increase in tariffs has placed such mines in an exceedingly precarious position. If the Minister can contemplate using railway rates to induce manufacturers to go to border areas, I think he should be careful not to use railway rates to endanger the existence and the wellbeing of marginal mines on the Reef, with consequent hardships to those who might be thrown out of employment. All for the sake of earning a few thousand rand extra in revenue to swell the Minister’s already big surpluses.

I would like also to say a word on the unduly heavy burdens which increased rates will place on railway-users in the Western Cape, a subject about which I have some slight knowledge. I would like to deal with the effect of the increase in rates on the tempo of our development here in the Western Cape. Our industries are indeed severely handicapped by the new railway rates. As it is now, it costs many firms more to rail products to the Witwatersrand market than it does to manufacture them here. This rate increase will push up the cost of raw materials necessary to make the finished product; it will increase the cost of manufacture and then add further costs to the distribution of the finished product. The hon. the Minister should take note of the fact that in Johannesburg knowledgeable men are aware that these products of the Cape will now cost the public more. Mr. E. P. Bradlow of Johannesburg, a past president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce, said: “The increase in rates will have to be passed on in higher prices to the wage-earner, which will in turn reduce his real earnings. It is the poor man, the middle income man, who suffers under this Minister’s shortsighted folly. Sir, the increase in coal rates will weigh very heavily on Cape industries. It will raise the cost of electricity in this city by some R200,000, and this does not take into account the increased cost of coal supplied direct to industry, and also the increased cost of power. Already the Western Cape is suffering severely from the threatened loss of many of its export markets. It is also threatened because the “apartheid” policy promises to withdraw African labour from the Western Cape. This rates increase, coming at this juncture, is perturbing industry and commerce here. They feel that an unfair burden such as this should not have been placed upon their shoulders. It will place them in a very disadvantageous competitive position. Their main market lies to the north, and the Cape is entitled to consider that it deserves more attention in railway rating policy for its own special needs. May I remind the hon. Minister that the manufactures of the Western Cape are largely the products of light manufacturing industries, and they bear the greatest increase in railage because they are rated at the highest tariffs and must be carried longer distances to their markets than the manufactures of other industrial centres. May I also remind the hon. the Minister that his exclusion of export rates from the surcharge will not benefit Cape industries, since these rates apply mainly in respect of traffic moving to the coast from inland, and since special rates for exports by rail to the north have only been granted to a very limited extent.

Sir, I have said earlier in my speech that the Minister tends to pursue policies which subject the wider interests of the country to the narrower interests of the Administration. In particular this is manifested in his attitude to the projected pipeline from Durban to Johannesburg. Again other members will deal with this project in greater detail. Nevertheless it would, at this stage, be interesting if the Minister could make up his mind to tell us in his reply what he conceives to be the function of the Railways. Do they or do they not exist to supply cheap transport for the benefit of the country? Is that not their legal obligation? It is quite clear that the Minister intends to use the pipeline profits for the exclusive benefit of the Railways rather than pass on some savings to the people of South Africa. Surely if technological developments in transport can cheapen costs, at least some of the savings should be passed on to the general public. Lowering the price of petrol in inland centres is not, as the Minister seemed to think it is, a donation to the motorist. It means that the distribution wheels of commerce and industry can turn more cheaply, and the competition between different elements of private enterprise cause savings, which are passed on to the public, in order to attract increased sales. It would be a magnificent gesture towards a quickened tempo of economic and trade expansion to be able to lower the cost of transport, to reduce the cost of distribution whether it be by rail or by road. But the hon. the Minister has developed a one-track monopoly mind. It seems to be his clear intention —he has said so outright—to use all the extra profits from the cheaper method of pipeline transport to swell the Railway surpluses. I think his attitude in this matter constitutes a strong inducement to the public to doubt whether the Railways should be entrusted with the control of the pipeline. All inland users of petrol will be sadly disappointed if the Minister does not change his mind. When the Pipeline Commission recommended the shelving of the project for ten years, it was because the Railways had explicitly and unconditionally told the commission that they could carry the petroleum offered by rail at a lower cost than a pipeline, until 1968. In other words, the Railways made another miscalculation. They now find that they cannot carry all the petrol and petroleum products that will be offered for transport. They now realize that they need a pipeline fairly urgently, and the Minister has somersaulted backwards and reversed his forecasts and his policy. I repeat that he should sometimes consult leading economists like the Economic Advisory Council before forecasting economic needs. The attitude of the Railways towards the conveyance of petrol exposes the weird economics of monopoly-thinking. The cheapest form of transport of petroleum, we all agree, is by pipeline. The South Africa Act provides that the Railways should be run on business principles, due regard being had to the development of agriculture and industries and the promotion by means of cheap transport of inland settlement and development. It costs four or five times more to send petrol by rail. The Railways charge inland consumers about four times the cost of the service. They make about R1 2,000,000 annual profit, on an average, by the conveyance of petrol by Rall, and this “cheap” transport means that the inland consumers pay more than 6c a gallon more for petrol than they do at the coast. But, being a monopolist, the Minister says that it is in the public interest for the Railways to convey petrol in the more expensive way, even if it puts up the cost of living (and it does seriously affect the cost of living, because as I have shown, petrol is the lifeblood of distribution) and even if it breaches the intentions of the Republic of South Africa Act. The hon. Minister has a very tender conscience towards that Act when it comes to his use of the Rates Equalization Fund, but he conveniently forgets the terms of the Act and its objective to ensure cheap transport into the interior, when he sees a chance of easy profits on a hugh scale for the Railways. The Railways have insisted on opposing the construction of this pipeline while they can, physically, continue to carry the petrol the more costly way. They only surrender now to the idea of a pipeline because they cannot carry it any longer. But how does that help the inland consumer? The pipeline will only help the Railways and nobody else if the hon. Minister keeps to his expressed intentions. The Railways will make even better profits and the inland user will pay the same price! The Minister has said that the Railways will manage the pipeline and they will recoup themselves for any loss of revenue. The “cheap transport” policy, laid down in the Act, is thrown overboard by this monopoly, regardless of the wider good of the people and of our country’s economy. I believe, Sir, that this narrow, selfish, foolish outlook has passed the point of public acceptance and public toleration. Heavy burdens, unnecessary burdens, should not be placed on the shoulders of the railway user. It would be well for the Minister, if he will not follow the injunctions of the Republic of South Africa Act regarding cheap transport, to heed the advice of the most successful businessmen for many generations; he should adopt as his aim the policy of Henry Ford who said: “Sell your services as cheaply as you can to the public and pay your workers as much as you can.”

Sir, I have said all that I wish to say at this juncture in this series of debates. I leave it to other hon. members on this side to develop the line of thought I have started and to add weight to what I have said on other matters and to fill in any gaps I have left in putting the amendment which I have moved. I know hon. members on this side will give details of how the higher cost of living resulting, directly from the increase of railway rates, will bear most harshly on the lower and middle income groups, on pensioners and poor people, on the man-in-the-street and the woman-in-the-home, who will find it harder than ever before to make ends meet. I hope the hon. Minister sleeps uneasily in his bed to-night thinking of their unhappy condition.

I second the amendment.

1 want to associate myself with the words of gratitude which the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) expressed to the Minister for the relief granted to railway pensioners. I agree with the hon. the Minister that that relief was absolutely essential, and I feel that not only will the pensioners welcome it but that they will truly appreciate it, particularly those pensioners who retired a few years ago on a very meagre pension. To them this will indeed be a considerable relief. Then I also want to join the hon. member for Wynberg in expressing my gratitude to the general manager and his staff for the very good work that has been done by the Railways during the past year. The fact that there has been a noticeable increase in the efficiency of the staff as a whole justifies the salary and wage increases granted to them. As a result of this increased efficiency, the cost structure of our country will remain on a competitive basis and these wage increases will not have the effect of increasing the cost of living. But I want to go further than the hon. member for Wynberg and also thank the Minister for the wage increases granted to the staff. I want to thank him for having kept his word to the staff and for having carried out the undertaking which he gave the staff last March. In particular I want to thank him for the fact that he saw to it that wage increases were given to the whole of the staff and not only to a section of the staff as advocated by the Opposition last year.

We did not.

Oh yes, they did. I also want to congratulate the hon. the Minister on his Budget. Once again this budget testifies to the buoyancy of our economy and to our country’s wonderful economic growth which is still continuing. Whatever the criticism of the Budget may be. the public and the Press and the Opposition and even the hon. member for Wynberg are agreed on one thing and that is that the present Minister who is at the head of affairs has achieved a very great deal and that the Railways are safe in his hands.

The hon. member for Wynberg says that the facts show that the White staff have been given an increase not of 10 per cent but of only 6 per cent approximately. I think the hon. member’s facts are out of date. That may have been the original estimate, but I think the facts will show that the full effect of the rationalization in the case of the White staff in general amounts to at least 10 per cent, if not 12 per cent. An analysis which I have made shows that in the case of seven groups the wage increases were definitely considerably more than 6 per cent. So, for example, we find that the railworkers received a wage increase of 16 per cent, shunters 11.6 per cent, clerks (Grade I) 9 per cent, artisans 7.5 per cent, assistant foremen 10.7 per cent, chief clerks 11.2 per cent, and superintendents 12.9 per cent. I want to say no more about the wage increases except that I think that the railway staff still have a very clear recollection of the words of the Leader of the Opposition at Aliwal North during the election campaign, where he challenged the hon. the Prime Minister to promise that the wages and benefits of the railwaymen would not be cut the moment the election was over. Far from having had their benefits and wages reduced, the railway officials have received R37,862,000 in improved wages since the 1961 election. I notice that the hon. the Leader of the Opposition pretends to have no recollection of having used those words. If he has any doubt as to whether he ever used these words, I want to say to him that he will find them in his own party’s official newspaper, the Weekblad of 16 October 1961, on the front page. There he will find the words that he used and that I quoted here. The railway officials have not forgotten those words.

The hon. member for Wynberg accuses the Minister of having pushed up the cost of living by means of these tariff increases. But in introducing these tariff increases the Minister in fact went out of his way to eliminate surcharges which would seriously influence production costs so that in that way the cost of living could be kept in check. That is why it was stipulated that the surcharge would not be applicable to, amongst other things, harbour dues, road transportation fees, passenger fares and grain elevator fees and, furthermore, an impressive list of 20 different products were exempted from the surcharge. A calculation has been made of the effect that this 10 per cent surcharge will have on the cost of living on the average family and it has been found that the amount is 33c per month. The actual increase in railage is insignificant therefore as far as necessaries are concerned. If the retail prices of the various commodities had been increased by no more than the increase in railage, the extra railage would have very little effect indeed. I concede at once that in certain cases, however, retail prices have been increased by much more than the actual increase in railage. If any reproach can be made in this connection and if anyone is guilty then it is certainly not the hon. the Minister but commerce. The small degree to which the cost of living has actually been affected by this increase in tariffs is reflected in the following extract from the monthly bulletin of the Department of Commerce and Industries for January 1963. The bulletin says—

Since 1939 goods tariffs have been increased by 107.35 per cent, while retail prices have increased by 133.7 per cent over the same period. But when the 10 per cent surcharge was imposed in 1962, certain products and tariffs were exempted. On those products the increase since 1939 has only been 88.5 per cent in comparison with an increase of 133.7 per cent in retail prices.

The travelling expenses of employees by train from their residences to their places of employment and back again play an important role in the cost of living of a family. In spite of all the losses which are suffered on passenger services, passenger fares were not increases when this surcharge was imposed. Do you know, Mr. Speaker, that since 1939 there has been an increase of only 55.2 per cent in the fares on suburban passenger services? In 1911, for example, 52 years ago, a single first class ticket between Cape Town and Simonstown cost 25c while to-day it costs 32c, an increase of only 28 per cent. Do these cheap train fares on the suburban passenger services not constitute a positive contribution by the Railways towards combating a rise in the cost of living? No, I really do not think that the hon. member for Wynberg can prove that there has been any appreciable rise in the cost of living as a result of this increase in railway tariffs. The hon. member has no justification for seeking to attribute the blame to the Minister in this connection.

The hon. member for Wynberg says that it was unnecessary to increase the tariffs. What reason does he advance for saying that? On his own calculations he comes to the conclusion that it would simply have meant that the Minister would have closed the year with more or less the deficit for which he had budgeted. That is his reason as to why there should have been no tariff increases; but what would have been his solution in regard to the deficit of R21,000,000 which the Minister would have had to face this year? If tariffs had not been increased, the Minister would have had to face a deficit of R21,000,000 this year. The Opposition approve of the increase in railway pensions and they thank the Minister for it, but where would the money have come from to give further assistance to the railway pensioners if no surplus had been anticipated next year? How would the Rates Equalization Fund and the Betterment Fund have been strengthened? The surplus of R 10,000,000 for this year has been used to strengthen these funds. Does the hon. member for Wynberg regard that as necessary or not?

Of course it is necessary.

Yes, of course he regards it as necessary. It was none other than he who described the Betterment Fund as insolvent last year and warned the Minister that we could not allow this fund to fall into arrear. But now that the Minister has the money to strengthen the Betterment Fund as asked for by the hon. member, he says that the Minister should not have had this money. What sort of reasoning is that? After all, that is what the hon. member says, because he would have preferred to see the Minister closing the financial year with a deficit rather than with a surplus. But I should like to help the hon. member out of his difficulty with the Betterment Fund. If he says that the contribution to the Betterment Fund should be made out of current revenue, it simply means that without an increase in tariffs the deficit would not have been R2,500,000 only but R8,500,000. It would have meant then that a deficit of R8,500,000 would have had to be defrayed from the Rates Equalization Fund. But through this year’s surplus the Rates Equalization Fund is being strengthened by almost R4,500,000, with the result that it now stands at approximately R29,500,000. Does the hon. member for Wynberg regard that as necessary? No, the hon. member does not regard this as necessary because he says that the Rates Equalization Fund could have been used to wipe out any deficit in 1962-3. Since that is his attitude I take it that if tariffs had not been increased, the Fund would also have had to be used next year to wipe out the deficit of R21,000,000. What would the position of the Rates Equalization Fund have been then? The Fund would then have been depleted. In other words, what the hon. member for Wynberg actually advocates is that this Fund should be depleted entirely. But the remarkable thing is that that is precisely what the hon. member does not want. Last year he adopted precisely the opposite attitude. He then wanted this Fund to be strengthened as much as possible. You will remember that, Mr. Speaker, because he still invoked your assistance in this connection. Last year the hon. member had the following to say about this Fund—

How can one understand the hon. member? This year he wanted to have the Fund depleted again, so that, to use his own words, it would once again stand like a skeleton in the cupboard. And then the hon. member for Wynberg had the temerity the other day to talk about “somersaulting” on the part of the Minister. When it comes to somersaulting, he would be well advised to remain silent, because on the subject of railway finances there have been times when he has carried on in this House like a cat on hot bricks.

The hon. member for Wynberg says that this tariff increase will have far-reaching effects on our economic development. In saying that the hon. member is only the mouthpiece once again of certain commercial and industrial interests who were very quick after the tariff increase last year to prophesy that this tariff surcharge would seriously hamper the economy of this country, that it would push up the cost of living and would have a detrimental effect on the sale of commercial articles overseas and that it would place a curb on industrial development. It is a remarkable thing that these commercial and industrial interests are only too ready always to criticize the railway tariff policy; that they are always ready to show what disruptive effects the tariff policy generally has on the country’s economic and industrial development. Sir, these interests are very inclined to forget that it has been under this same railway tariff structure that we have had enormous industrial development in South Africa in recent years; that it has been under this same tariff structure that agricultural production has increased on such an unprecedented scale that to-day we are faced with surpluses. They are very inclined to forget that if the Railways had not been in a position to comply with the transportation requirements of industry and of agriculture and to provide transport at fair and economic rates, this enormous development could not possibly have taken place. They overlook it because it is convenient for them to do so. Just think of the considerable contribution that railway tariffs have made towards the promotion of agriculture and the stabilization of agricultural production. We have low tariffs on maize exports, on export fruit, agricultural machinery and the conveyance of livestock in drought-stricken areas, and all this is designed to promote agricultural development in South Africa.

The hon. member for Wynberg tells us that these tariffs will also harm the mining industry. As far as the mining industry is concerned, the coal-mining industry is still being encouraged by the particularly low tariffs which have always been charged on the conveyance of coal. Even with the recent increase in tariffs, the tariff on the conveyance of coal remains extremely low. Let me give two examples. The charge for conveying a 200 lbs. bag of coal from Oogies to Cape Town was increased by 3.73c while the charge to Bloemfontein was increased by 2.7c. This resulted in price increases of 4c in Cape Town and 2½c in Bloemfontein on a 200 lbs. bag of coal. But the increase was not made applicable to coal exports. The low tariffs on coal, where the principle is followed that transport costs are reduced as the mileage increases, do not only help the industry to compete successfully on the overseas market, but they also help those industries which are situated far from the coal mines. In this way the Railways also promote the decentralization of industries to a certain extent. The mining industry receives a further benefit in the shape of low tariffs on export ores. Mr. Speaker, these industrial interests who, together with the hon. member for Wynberg, have so much criticism to offer of the railway tariff structure also overlook the very important role which the Railways played in the early stages of the development of secondary industries to promote industry in South Africa. So, for example, there were distribution and preferential tariff measures which benefited local industries and enabled them to compete with imported articles. to-day many of these measures are no longer necessary, of course, because most industries are strong enough economically to be able to compete with the imported product. But even to-day the low tariffs on raw materials for manufacturing purposes still remain an important source of assistance to industries. These industrial interests who criticize railway tariffs so much, also overlook the concessions which are granted on certain export products. Where it is obvious that the ordinary railway tariff is such that it will have a detrimental effect on the ability of a local product to compete on the overseas market, the Railways introduce a special export tariff with the specific object of expanding the market and promoting industrial production. About 70 per cent of the total exports, according to the volume of traffic, qualify for these special export tariffs. This concession which is granted to industries means that every year the Railways lose revenue to the extent of R3,000,000 which it would have earned if those products had been transported at the ordinary tariff. That is a fact which is forgotten by these commercial interests, but what they do not forget is to increase their prices out of all proportion as soon as there is any tariff increase, and then they conveniently blame the Railways for the resultant rise in the cost of living.

The hon. member for Wynberg has again enlarged to-day upon the serious effects that last year’s increase in tariffs have on our country’s economic development. But these far-reaching effects that were prophesied by the industrial and commercial interests have not materialized at all, and the hon. member for Wynberg knows that as well as I do. There is every indication that our economy is flourishing at all levels, and this Budget itself affords the best proof of that. If ever there was a good barometer to reflect economic development it is railway revenue. But I suppose the hon. member for Wynberg will say that this is due to the higher tariffs; that that is the reason why railway revenue has improved to such an extent, but if he does say it it will only be a half-truth. As a matter of fact he himself quoted what the Minister said in this regard in his Budget speech. The Minister said this—

Does that not reflect economic development and growth? But let us see what happened to our domestic trade after this tariff increase. I quote from the monthly bulletin of the Department of Commerce and Industries for January 1963. This is what they say—

No, it is clear that in increasing the tariffs the Minister was not acting injudiciously. When it became clear to him that it was necessary to do so, he chose the time correctly and judiciously at a stage when the economy was revealing an upward tendency. I feel that it would have been unwise on the part of the Minister to have increased the tariff last year when he introduced the Budget, because at that time, although the downward trend in our economy had already been checked, there were not such clear signs of an upsurge as there were in September.

The hon. member for Wynberg talks about the far-reaching effects that the increased tariffs have on our economic development. But surely in saying that the hon. member must have closed his ears and eyes to everything that has been going on around him over the past few months. He has become a stranger in Jerusalem. Does he no longer read his newspapers? Let me just read out a few extracts to him to refresh his memory. On 13 September 1962 Dr. M. S. Louw stated: “Conditions now favourable for increased economic growth.” On 13 November 1962 Professor G. C. W. Schumann predicted: “Greater economic upsurge.” What does the President of the Chambers of Commerce, Mr. Bradlow, say in his New Year message?—

On 21 February of this year the Association of Building Societies issued a statement in which they said—

Mr. Gerrard Rissik, the President of the Reserve Bank, stated on 22 February 1963—

The opinion of the Standard Bank was given in their journal, Trade Tendencies, on 2 March of this year—

On 21 February 1963 we had this report—

But Sir Francis was not taking into account the fact that there are people in this country who do not want this good news, people who prefer to remain pessimists and prophets of doom, of whom the hon. member for Wynberg is an excellent example.

There is one matter in connection with which I want to make a very serious appeal to-day to commerce and industry in South Africa. In the past they have severely criticized the tariff structure of the Railways, because, amongst other things, it detrimentally affects the decentralization of industries. The Minister of Transport has now appointed a commission of inquiry to go into the question of tariffs and, amongst other things, to report on the method of tariff fixation with a view to promoting the decentralization of industries. This commission is representative of commerce and industry and includes, amongst others, representatives of the Federated Chambers of Industry, the Chambers of Commerce, the Afrikaanse Sakekamer and the S.A. Agricultural Union. In the light of the strenuous criticism that we have had in the past from commerce and industry with regard to the tariff structure of the Railways, and also in connection with this important matter of the decentralization of industries, this commission is a challenge to commerce and industry, a challenge which they will have to meet. My appeal to commerce and industry is to make the fullest use of the golden opportunity which is being offered to them and to suggest a solution whereby tariffs can be fixed in such a way that the tariff structure will be able to promote, better and more effectively than has been the case hitherto perhaps, the policy of decentralization of industries. That is urgently necessary, otherwise no solution will be found and we will again have a repetition of this unsavoury criticism from the same people. I have gained the impression from the memoranda and the Press reports that I have read so far that they are so divided amongst themselves and that they are not prepared to express their opinion clearly and unequivocally with regard to this matter, that there is a real danger that no constructive solution will be put forward by them. Let me mention an example. One Chamber of Industries, supported by a regional development association, suggested to the commission, for example, that the present gap between tariffs on manufactured goods and on raw materials should be reduced. Another body, on the other hand, expressed the conviction in the memorandum which it submitted to the commission that any reduction of the existing gap between these tariffs would encourage the establishment of industries at places where the raw material was available; that this would seriously prejudice the establishment of industries at places which have very little in the way of raw materials, as for example in the Free State and in border area towns like King William’s Town and East London. Here we find that two completely contradictory views were submitted to the commission. I mention this merely to show what a difficult problem this whole question of decentralization of industries is and how it may link up with the question of railway tariffs. Then we have the commission of inquiry which was appointed some time ago to go into the Rhodesian railway tariffs. The finding of that commission was that railway tariffs actually play a very small rôle in the establishment of industries. But here we have always had the criticism from the Opposition and from commerce and industry that railway tariffs in particular are to blame in connection with the centralization of industries. Commerce and industry now have the opportunity to do something and I want to make an appeal to them to devote all their energies and their time to this matter. I do so because I have a genuine interest in this matter. I represent a Bloemfontein constituency which has a great interest in promoting a policy of decentralization of industries. I appeal to commerce and industry, therefore, to submit concrete proposals to the Schumann Commission so that from this commission’s report a formula for tariff fixation can be devised in terms of which the Railways will be able to promote a policy of decentralization of industries more effectively than has been the case hitherto perhaps.

The hon. member for Wynberg now seeks to claim the credit for the decision to build a pipeline. The hon. member himself admits that he last raised the matter in this House in 1958. It so happens that all the factors which motivated the decision to build a pipeline only came into existence after 1958. Or did the hon. member for Wynberg know as far back as 1958 that Amcor would conclude a contract with Japan for the supply of pig-iron; that a synthetic rubber industry would come into existence at Sasolburg and that certain goods would have to be imported for that purpose? Did the hon. member know as far back as 1958 that there would be an enormous increase in the export of maize? If he did know about it then he could at least have warned the maize farmers timeously! No, the simple truth is that the hon. member for Wynberg knew nothing about these things in 1958 when he last discussed this matter, but to-day he wants to make the country believe that the Minister of Transport decided in 1963 to build a pipeline for which the United Party pleaded in this House as far back as 1958 and for reasons which are entirely different from those which to-day motivate the building of the line. The hon. member’s attempt to claim the credit for the United Party is laughable and reminds one of the stories of Oom Kaspaas. The hon. member is dissatisfied, however, because the building of the pipeline is not going to bring down the price of petrol in the hinterland. What else does he expect? He once again urged this afternoon, as he always does, that the Railways should be run on business lines. But what does he expect from the hon. the Minister as the business manager of the Railways? Sir, this is how the hon. member for Wynberg wants us to do business. He expects the Railways to make a capital investment of R20,000,000, on which interest has to be paid annually, and then, because petrol will now be conveyed through a pipeline and no longer by the Railways, he expects an immediate reduction in the price of petrol, which is a high-tariff item. On the other hand, the place of that petrol is to be taken not by high-tariff traffic but by low-tariff traffic. In other words, he expects the Railways to replace its profitable traffic with low-tariff traffic and then he wants the Railways to build a pipeline which costs R20,000,000 for the conveyance of that profitable traffic and to convey it at a low tariff. If the hon. member was the manager of a firm that did that sort of business, he would be dismissed at the first board meeting; they would not even wait for a shareholders’ meeting.

No. Mr. Speaker, this Budget is a good budget. The Railways fulfil a very important task in our national economy. This Budget bears ample testimony to the fact that the Railway Administration is fully aware of the expanding transportation requirements of this country. With the money that we are being asked to vote here, adequate provision is being made to meet those requirements. We have great faith in this country’s economic development but with a Budget such as this we have equally great faith that our greatest transportation undertaking is ready and able fully to meet its obligations in the pattern of economic development which awaits us in the years to come. This Budget bears testimony to that economic development in no uncertain way.

The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) is the leading speaker on the Government benches on railway matters. He is also the Chairman of the Railway Select Committee, and I can well understand the predicament in which he finds himself this afternoon in that he has to rise and discuss this Budget with a feeling of guilt. I think it would have been far more appropriate if the hon. member had used this occasion to justify the attitude that he adopted when railway matters were under discussion here last year. I would like to remind the House what the hon. member’s approach was when we were discussing the question of increased rates and tariffs last year. Let me point out that this was stated at the conclusion of the debate on railway matters last session. The hon. member said this—

I repeated it this afternoon.

He went on to say—

I repeated it this afternoon.

We can therefore eliminate the idea of tariff increases, Mr. Speaker! I say to the hon. member that if he has any hope of one day taking the place of the Minister of Transport, then the first essential is that the hon. member should at least be consistent in the policy which he enunciates in this House.

I am not as conceited as you are.

In that regard I therefore think that it is quite superfluous for the hon. member to devote quite a considerable portion of his speech to a most powerful plea to the representatives of commerce and industry to appear before the committee investigating the rates and tariffs structure. They do not need these appeals from the hon. member; they have expressed themselves fairly strongly in the past; they have stated in no uncertain way what they think about the Minister’s policy of arbitrating in an attempt to balance his Budget, slapping 5 to 10 per cent increases onto the existing rates and tariffs of the Administration. I am quite sure that the representatives of commerce and industry will have a great deal to say on this question when they submit their memoranda and their evidence to this committee.

Sir, it is well known that I am not easily given to congratulate the Minister, as hon. members on the Government benches are accustomed to do.

Surely you are not going to do it now.

I can assure the Minister that I am not going to do it. The Minister knows my views about his policy only too well. But I think one should take advantage of this opportunity to congratulate the management on the step that they recently took in inviting the heads and leaders of the staff associations to attend the annual meeting of senior officers of the Administration. I hope that this policy will be continued by the management because I think that it is in line with modern industrial trends as a means of obtaining better relationships between labour and management. I am quite sure that if this policy is continued it will certainly have beneficial results and lead to more efficient administration of the Railways. But at the same time I hope that it will act as a warning to hon. members on the Government benches who have on former occasions in this House attacked the leaders of these associations. I refer to members like the hon. member for Parow (Mr. S. F. Kotze) and the hon. member for Malmesbury (Mr. van Sladen) who in the past have made vicious and unbridled attacks on persons such as the President of the Artisans’ Staff Association. The hon. member for Malmesbury, if my memory serves me correctly, even went so far as to associate him with communist activities; and they did so merely because these railway trade union leaders looked after the interest of their members. In this regard I also want to refer to the hon. member for Bethlehem (Mr. Knobel) who, when the Artisans’ Staff Association recently made their demands to the Minister for pay increase, described them as irresponsible and traitorous acts to a first-class Minister. Whilst on the question of staff associations, may I say that it is a great pity that the hon. the Minister did not have a word of thanks in his Budget speech for the leadership of the several staff associations. Sir, this is quite an important point because the hon. the Minister had considerable negotiations with the leaders of these staff associations during the past year on the question of pay increases. The Minister and the management of the Administration held no fewer than 18 meetings with representatives of the several staff associations and I am personally of the opinion that it was only due to the great sense of responsibility and to the leadership of the respective trade unions that a general transportation strike was averted last year. The Minister is well aware of the fact that feelings were running very high amongst the railway workers and that they were not prepared to accept the statement that he made here last year that he could not give a general pay increase. The Minister now says in his Budget speech that he gave an undertaking that should nothing unforeseen happen he would consider the question of pay increases towards the end of the first half of the year. I want to say to the Minister that I cannot find any statement in this regard in Hansard. I have looked through the debates of last year and I may have missed his statement but I certainly cannot find any statement to that effect made by the Minister on the floor of this House; and I ask the Minister now when he replies to the debate to indicate when he did make that public statement to which he refers in his Budget speech. If he did make such a statement then it is completely contradictory to the statement made by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) at the end of the debate last year which I quoted here, because if the Minister made such a statement that he would consider an increase, then I see no justification for the statement by the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) as the main Government speaker when the debate was concluded last year. I shall be glad therefore if the Minister would indicate when in fact he did make that statement. What did the Minister actually say? I think it is as well to remind the House and the country what he did say. On 14 March the Minister said this—

What is wrong with that?

But a couple of days later the Minister was even more emphatic. He said this—

And now listen to this, Sir—

These statements are quite emphatic.

I said at that stage.

Sir, there has been a remarkable change in a matter of two months, or less than two months as I will indicate in a moment. But what was the Minister faced with? He was faced with growing discontent and possibly strike action. He was forced to take one of three decisions which according to his view would be least harmful to the interest of South Africa and which—much more important to the Minister—would be least harmful to the prestige of the Minister. The Minister stated emphatically that it was not in the interest of South Africa that there should be an undue increase in wages at that stage. I can only comment that it was for the Minister to decide what, according to his view, would be least harmful to the interests of South Africa. What were the three alternatives? Firstly he had to face the possibility of a general transportation strike which would not be in the interests of South Africa, but he could not face that possibility because it would harm the prestige of the Minister and the image that he had created about himself as a responsible Minister of Transport. He therefore could not face that. What was the second alternative. If he did not face the possibility of a general transportation strike then he had to face the prospect of a discontented staff with a consequent loss of efficiency with its effects on railway revenue. That was also a very difficult proposition because if the Minister took that alternative he would still have his prestige harmed as an efficient Minister of Transport and he therefore decided that he could not face that alternative; so what did he do? He followed the third alternative which was open to him and that was to slap a general 10 per cent onto rates and tariffs, with certain exceptions. Sir, how was that decision arrived at? Let me give the House the facts. It was the management that showed the Minister a way out of his dilemma. The Minister will not deny that. It was the management which, aware of what could happen and of the seriousness of the situation, who worked out a face-saving solution for the hon. the Minister. The idea was conceived by the management of using these demands from the railwaymen for pay increases as an opportunity to rationalize the whole question of pay and allowances. Let me ask the Minister whether he had ever before mentioned this question of rationalizing pay and allowances? When was this idea conceived? We did not hear of it from him last year nor the year before. It was the management who conceived the idea of using the demands for increased pay as an opportunity to rationalize the whole question of pay and allowances, a question which incidentally has in past years been the subject of Railway Select Committee resolutions. It was the management who first, at a series of meetings, met the heads of the trade unions to get their general acceptance to the principle of rationalizing the salary and wage structure, coupled with the question of pay increases, as a means of saving the political face of the hon. Minister. It was the management who met these representatives of the workers’ associations in the first place and they succeeded in getting general acceptance of the principle of rationalizing the salary and wage structure coupled with pay increases. It was only after the General Manager had obtained the agreement of the trade unions and reported the position to the Minister that the Minister then met representatives of the trade unions and at a series of meetings between 6 and 13 August last year arrived at an agreement with leaders of the trade unions. Sir, I have outlined these discussions which the Minister will not deny because he knows that these are facts and he knows exactly how these things developed. I have outlined these discussions in order to show that through the responsible approach and attitude of the trade union leaders and through the diplomacy of the General Manager and his staff, a serious situation was averted which could have arisen as the result of the shortsighted approach of the hon. the Minister. I have also considered it necessary to state the situation fully in order to expose the unsympathetic approach of the hon. the Minister. The longer the Minister has been in office the more he has forgotten the interests of the railwaymen. That is symptomatic of someone who remains a long time in office. He has forgotten that he was once a railwayman. The Minister always claimed that he could take a tough line with the railwaymen; that he could talk their language. The plain fact of the matter is that any improvement in the railwaymen’s conditions especially with regard to pay and allowances, during the period of office of this Minister, has only been achieved after considerable pressure from the organized unions of railway workers. Never on any occasion has this Minister come along and said, “I have a surplus; I think the railwaymen have earned the increases which I have promised to give them and I am giving those increases now ”. It is perfectly clear that the Minister has only bowed to pressure from the organized railway unions. Sir, I want to make it absolutely clear that we on this side of the House have never contended—and I say this in anticipation of the Minister’s reply—that if rates and tariffs have to be increased in order to maintain decent standards of living for the railway workers, this will militate against the interests of South Africa. The record proves the contrary. The record of the United Party Government clearly shows that increases of pay and allowances given to railwaymen were always given when surpluses were declared by the then Minister of Railways. Surpluses earned by the railwaymen were always passed on to the railwaymen themselves but the Minister can never produce a record of that nature. What we have stated, however, is that to increase rates and tariffs when it is not necessary is against the interests of South Africa. The figures revealed in the Minister’s own Budget show that it was an ill-conceived and over-hasty step on the part of the Minister to increase rates and tariffs. The Minister states that if he had not done so he would have shown a deficit of some R2,500,000, and then he goes on to argue that the Rates Equalization Fund should not absorb this deficit because in his view it is not the function of the Rates Equalization Fund to absorb deficits arising from salary and wage increases but that its function is to cushion the adverse effects of lower revenue due to general economic conditions. In other words, if there is a deficit through general economic conditions the Minister would be quite entitled to cover that deficit by making use of the Rates Equalization Fund. Sir, to my mind it is splitting hairs to make these statements. General economic conditions may be such that although increased tonnages may be hauled, the expenditure incurred in hauling that tonnage may increase to such an extent that it resulted in a deficit. Traffic cannot be hauled without the efforts of the railwaymen. Salaries and wages to-day represent about 47 per cent of the total cost. This cost may rise like any other item of expenditure in the administration of the Railways. Therefore in my view a deficit resulting from increases in salaries and wages can be met from the Rates Equalization Fund in terms of a provision made in the Finance Act, just as in the case of any other cost that may arise. But there is a further reason why in our view it was not necessary to increase rates and tariffs, and this reason was given by the Minister himself in past Budget statements. The Minister himself has taken the stand that any extra expenditure resulting from increases in wages and salaries must be met out of increased revenue. I would remind the hon. the Minister what he said in his 1956 Budget speech. There he dealt with increases granted to railway workers at that time, and I quote from his Budget speech; he said—

In other words, the railwaymen got their increases; the extra tonnages were available; the Railways earned this additional money, and in spite of these increases given to the railwaymen the Minister was still able to show a surplus. But, Sir, where did the money come from to be able to pay the concessions that were granted in 1956? Let me indicate that in that year the Minister was very proud of the new records that the Railways were breaking in the haulage of additional tonnages. The additional traffic for 1956 was no less than approximately 2.750,000 tons of revenue-earning traffic. The Minister will find that on page 97 of the General Manager’s Report for that year. This year, according to the Minister’s own Budget statement, the Railways will be carrying an extra 3,600,000 tons of revenue-earning traffic over and above the 1961-2 figure. Clearly therefore, using the same argument which the Minister used in his 1956 Budget speech, having regard to the fact that in the current year they will carry more than 7,000,000 tons of additional revenue-earning traffic over and above the traffic carried in 1962, this increase could have been granted, and the additional revenue from the carrying of these additional tonnages would have been more than sufficient to cover the increases now granted to the railwaymen. Sir, I think our case is incontrovertible that the railway workers could have got these benefits without recourse to an increase in rates and tariffs.

Now before I turn to one other matter I want to deal with a few other items. I want to touch briefly on the question of the oil pipeline. As I gathered from the Minister’s statement on a previous occasion, the building of this pipeline will cause a diversion of a considerable amount of traffic from the port of Lorenço Marques. I would therefore like to ask the Minister what is going to be the effect of the building of this pipeline on the Moçambique Convention? The Minister knows that under that Convention the Portuguese are to receive a percentage of the revenue earned on goods transported to the Witwatersrand complex, and obviously with the building of this pipeline that percentage is going to alter considerably. I should like to know whether in the negotiations that the Minister has been carrying out with the Portuguese for the amendment of the Mozambique Convention, this question of the pipeline figured in any way in those discussions. I should like to know whether the building of the pipeline was considered in relation to our agreement with the Portuguese under the Mozambique Convention. I should like the Minister in his reply to give us some indication of developments in that regard.

Then there is one other matter to which I want to refer and that is the preparation of the Estimates, and I do so because year after year we table Select Committee reports in this House with very little time sometimes to discuss the resolutions passed by the Railway Select Committee. This matter to which I now refer can have a considerable effect on the provision that the Treasury has to make through the Minister of Finance for railway capital requirements. The Minister will remember that last year certain queries were raised in regard to his method of estimating the capital requirements of the Railway Administration. Looking at the Auditor-General’s report for this year we find that of the capital requirements requested by the Administration for the year 1961-2 no less than R69,000,000 was not drawn by the Administration although they had budgeted for it; we find that they surrendered drawings from the Treasury a sum of no less than R5,750,000, making an unused capital for which the Treasury had already made provision, of no less than R85,000,000. As the Minister knows, in 1961 this was a matter of great concern to the Select Committee and it passed a very strongly worded resolution. I do not want to read the whole of this lengthy resolution, but amongst other things the Select Committee said—

The reply given by the Administration to this important resolution adopted in 1961, when we only had the one figure before us showing that at that stage something like R49,000,000 was unused, was that it had noted the remarks of the Committee and was introducing better methods of drawing up estimates. The whole point is that Treasury had to find R85,000,000 which was never used by the Railway Administration; that money had to be found possibly out of the pockets of the taxpayers; and if this policy of overestimating capital requirements is followed by the Railway Administration it is quite clear that Treasury certainly do not know where they stand in making satisfactory provision for the Minister’s requirements. Sir, this is a very important matter and I would like to ask the Minister whether when he replies to this debate he can give any indication as to what drawings have been surrendered by the Administration this year and how much of the capital money made available in the last Budget remained undrawn. I think this figure will certainly supply a fuller picture than we have before us at the moment from the Auditor-General’s report.

[Inaudible.]

No, the matter was dealt with in a limited fashion by my colleague, as the Minister knows. I am taking the matter further as a member of the Railway Select Committee. I do not think that the Minister can brush this matter aside so easily because the resolution adopted by the Select Committee was phrased in the strongest possible terms and in spite of that resolution, the further report that we now have from the Auditor-General shows that the position is even worse that it was originally envisaged by the Select Committee. I hope that the Minister will deal with this matter when he replies to this debate.

Then I want to turn to another aspect of this Budget statement and I wonder whether the Minister will deal with it when he replies, because I do think we should have some degree of consistency. You see, Sir, the hon. the Minister has shown remarkable versatility in presenting variations in railway revenue, to his own political advantage, in the Budget speeches that he makes in this House.

I refer to his statement in his Budget speech regarding the percentage of high-rated traffic and low-rated traffic of the total tonnage hauled. According to the Minister’s figures which he gave us in his Budget speech there has been a drop of 1.25 per cent as compared with the year 1962 in the case of high-rated traffic. I want to remind the House and the Minister that whenever the Minister has shown a deficit he has blamed it on a drop in high-rated traffic. In fact, in his 1959 Budget speech the Minister actually argued that a R16,000,000 loss of revenue could represent a 2.64 per cent drop in high-rated traffic. In 1960 the Minister ascribed his surplus to an increase in high-rated traffic. The figures in this Budget in relation to tonnages hauled and the surplus obtained, proved quite conclusively that his past contentions are quite fallacious. When the Minister has a surplus and there is a drop in high-rated traffic to what does he contribute this colossal surplus which he has? In another year when he has a deficit he comes along and argues that even a small drop in the ratio of high-rated traffic as against low-rated traffic is the cause. He argues that a 2.64 per cent can result in a drop of R16,000,000 in revenue.

I think what is really needed here, Sir, is a review of the actual role which the S.A. Railways play in the economy of this country. When you consider the various arguments and contentions of the Minister you expect at least a bit of consistency. I cannot see the consistency in the Minister’s argument to ascribe both a surplus and a deficit to an increase or a drop in high-rated traffic. The Railways is either going to pay or it is not going to pay. I think the Minister goes off the rails when it comes to these questions. I want to ask the Minister to give us an outline so that we can use it as a pro forma in future debates when we assess his Budget speeches in this House in regard to railway revenue as affected by high and low rated traffic.

What is really needed is a review of the actual role that railway transportation has to play in the country’s economy in relation to other forms of transportation. The question is becoming more and more important in view of the vast capital development foreshadowed in every Budget and the consequent ever-increasing interest burden which the Railways have to bear. To what extent we do not know. The 1957 Brown Book reflected a programme of no less than R768,000,000 of which R410,000,000 had been spent, leaving a works programme to be completed of something like R358,000,000. The Minister stated in 1957 that the Railways must be in a position to transport all the traffic offered at the beginning of 1961. Instead of achieving that target in 1961 it was reached 18 months before that date. In his 1961 Budget speech the Minister told the House that the requisite volume of traffic was not available from which we had to deduce that there was a surplus of tractive power and a surplus of rolling stock. In 1962 the Minister said in his Budge speech that the Railways could cope with all traffic offered for conveyance. He went further and he said, “The level of expenditure in regard to Capital and Betterment Works was following a downward trend ”. But we were told in this Budget speech that we could not slacken the tempo of the capital works programme of the Administration. In his Budget speech the Minister referred to old stock issues; not one of these capital development works is new. Teleprinter-services: the Minister dealt with that years ago; it is in the General Manager’s report. We have had electrification year after year. We have had the old hardy annual namely the doubling of the Natal main line. The Minister told us three years ago that that was going to be finished but it is still being doubled. The Minister said in 1959 that it would be completed in 1961 but this year it is still going to be doubled. The Brown Book shows a vast programme of no less than R883,500,000, of which R429,500,000 is still to be spent. But we were not told in the Budget speech how rail transport is considered in relation to the general economic and agricultural development of the country as a whole. May I ask the hon. the Minister whether his Planning Council consults the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council? It appears, Sir, that the Planning Council of the Railways shapes its plan to build South Africa around the railway system and not to develop the railway system to the economic benefit of South Africa. We hear of no plans to construct new lines to open up new areas. With the development of the Orange River scheme, even in its first stage, has there been any transportation planning for the development of those new areas? We have not heard one single word from the Minister what his Department envisages for these vast developments along the Orange River. That development is going to have a vast effect on the whole economic structure of South Africa. There will be movement of population, etc. I want to know from the Minister whether his Planning Council has considered what they have to do in regard to the Orange River Scheme. Again I ask the Minister to deal with that in his reply to the debate. Will he give the House and the country some inkling of what this Planning Council envisages in this regard? We have not had one word from the hon. the Minister in regard to the future of transportation in relation to railway transportation, air transportation and road transportation.

Sir, I can only conclude by repeating what I said in this House before and what I will continue to say as long as this policy is followed by the hon. the Minister, that one gets a picture of the Railways under this Minister as an economic Frankenstein sitting astride the body of South Africa sapping its resources for what end one does not know. One can only arrive at the conclusion that if the Minister as Minister of Transport can continue to create the image of himself as a highly efficient and effective, world-supported, popular Minister by creating a greater Frankenstein, a greater railway transportation Frankenstein in South Africa, then he will go down in the annals of history. But let me say this to the hon. the Minister: He may also at the same time be doing great harm to the whole economic structure and future of our country to which end we do not know.

I know it is customary to reply to the speech of someone who has just resumed his seat, but I really do not know what to say about the speech of the hon. member who has just sat down. He reminded me of someone who has pains in various parts of his body and then clutches here and clutches there in order to alleviate that pain. He blamed the Minister for having said in March that he did not regard it as the right time to increase wages, but now the hon. member is dissatisfied because the Minister increased wages six months later. Surely if someone has no money in March then he is entitled to say he has no money. But if in September or October he has the money, he is surely justified in doing what he intended doing. The United Party has so little confidence in the economy of the country that they never expected that there would be such economic development as to enable the Minister to increase wages still during that same year.

The hon. member who introduced the debate on this side of the House has already congratulated the Minister. He also congratulated the staff who are sitting to the left of us. I want to associate myself with what he said. The hon. member who has just sat down congratulated the staff rather clumsily, I would say, and at the same time tried to give the Minister a slap in the face. I regard that as very undesirable. The hon. member also said that the Minister has no sympathy for the railwayman. I should like the hon. member to listen to these few points he made and to which I want to react. If the Minister has no sympathy for the railwayman, who then relies on the support of the railwayman in the Republic of South Africa? On whom does the railwayman depend? This is a difficult question to put to the hon. member because he knows he made a false statement here when he said that the Government does not look after the interests of the railwayman. He knows that. In the last few years the railwayman has not only gradually, but fairly fast, given his support to this party which looks after his interests.

When preparing my speech I tried to compare the position of the railwayman in 1948 with his position to-day. The hon. member for Turffontein was not yet here in 1948. I tried to make this comparison in various spheres. I tried to make comparisons between trucks and passenger coaches and I also made a comparison in regard to the increased tariffs to which the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) now strenuously objects. We have a difficult year behind us; there have been droughts in most of the Cape Province, except for the western area, in the Free State, and in large areas of the Transvaal and also in Natal. Much additional transport had to be arranged. I almost want to say that hundreds of thousands of tons of maize had to be transported to the drought-stricken areas. Cattle and sheep had to be transported over long distances. Lucerne also had to be transported to the extent of hundreds of thousands of tons. It was no privilege to be in those areas at the time, but I had much to do with it. I want to congratulate the Minister on the fact that there were never complaints that trucks were not available for the urgent transportation of certain products to the drought-stricken areas. That fodder could never have been transported if the necessary trucks and tractive power were not available.

Both the United Party members who have spoken hitherto objected to the increased railway tariffs. We admit that tariffs were increased. We cannot promise that tariffs will never again be increased in future. Circumstances may demand that this should be done. But I can assure hon. members opposite that it will not be done unless it becomes necessary to do so.

What was the position of the railwayman in 1948? When this Government came into power there were numerous complaints from the railway personnel and the artisans. Every member of Parliament representing a railway constituency received several complaints. What is the position to-day, Sir? Do we receive such complaints? Yes, one receives complaints here and there, but what is the nature of those complaints? We no longer receive complaints from people who live in the greatest poverty or from people who sat in the streets and did not have a roof over their heads. We no longer received that type of complaint because in the meantime we had ensured that those people were properly housed. That could not have been done without an increase in tariffs. I admit that tariffs under the United Party were not as high as they are to-day, but in any case the position of the railwayman was much worse then than it is to-day. I have already said that there was no housing. I remember that when I entered this House in 1950 I made it my task to make representations to the Minister every day to try to provide houses for the railwaymen. to-day one seldom or never gets a request of that nature. I just want to mention that the type of house being built is a good one and it is situated in a decent locality. The position is no longer what it was in former years, under the United Party regime, when houses were built in what was called the railway camp. to-day the policy is that these people should live in the towns: the municipalities set aside certain areas and their houses are built amongst those of the public in every town. That is a very good thing. In my own constituency there are two towns where reailwaymen were elected the mayors of those towns. Since 1948 12,298 houses have been built. They were built under the various schemes evolved by the Department. Under the home ownership scheme, 6,122 houses were built; under the housing scheme supported by the building societies, 5,170 houses were built, and 1,006 departmental houses were sold to the railway staff, making a total of 12,298.

I have already said that tariffs under the United Party were low, but in order to improve the position of the railwayman tariffs were increased. I want to mention a few salary scales, what they were in 1948 and what they are in 1963. Then we will see who looked after the interests of the railway workers, that side of the House or this side. A clerk Grade 1, in 1948 earned R1, 380 per annum if he was a married man; to-day he receives R2,550. A driver under the United Party received R87 per month and to-day he receives R165, just 100 per cent more. A shunter received R66 and to-day he gets R135 a month; an artisan got R93 and to-day he gets R172; a checker received R75 and to-day he gets R145; a railworker—that is the man whom the hon. member for Wynberg said we did not look after— received R50, and to-day he gets R180; a constable got R90 and to-day he gets R150.

It is not only in regard to houses and wages that there have been improvements. These people become old and have to retire on pension, and then they must also be able to live decently. If we had continued on the basis on which the United Party left them in 1948, I wonder what the railwaymen would have had to live on to-day. I just want to give a few more figures. In 1948 a clerk, Grade 1, received an annual pension of R550. His cash payment was R1, 794. Under this Government his pension is R1, 275 per annum, with a cash payment of R4,386. What a difference, Mr. Speaker! Take the case of a constable. His pension was R355 and to-day it is R 1,038. A checker’s pension was R355 and to-day it is R1,004. A shunter got R315 in 1948, but to-day he gets R692.

May I put a question? Are these great improvements in pensions due to a change in the formula, or to increased wages?

It is due partly to the changed formula and also to the increased pensions.

Not only were the interests of the staff looked after. As I have already said, in 1948 we were not faced with nearly the same crisis, a drought crisis, for which we needed hundreds of extra trucks. If a person wanted to load sheep at Beaufort West to send them to the Cape, or from Colesberg to Johannesburg, he had to wait for weeks to get trucks. Perhaps in the meantime he had obtained a permit to load the stock, but by the time he received the trucks his permit had lapsed. That is no longer the position. If one needs a truck to-day one telephones the station fore man and asks whether one can have a truck for such-and-such a day, and then he says: “Yes, Sir, I will ring you in a moment". After an hour he rings and says that everything is in order.

I just want to make another comparison between 1948 and 1963. In 1948 we had 4,891 passenger coaches and to-day we have nearly 6,500. In 1948 we transported 254,000,000 passengers, and in 1962 we transported 315,000,000. In 1948 we had 65,811 trucks and in 1962 we had 106,185. That was a remarkable improvement. The goods traffic in 1948 was 54,000,000 tons and in 1962 it was just about 90,000,000 tons. In addition, many more bus services were introduced. The number of buses for goods traffic in 1948 was 733 and to-day there are 1,070. The same applies to the road passenger service. In 1948 we had 347 passenger buses and in 1962 there were 473. What is also important is the tonnage transported. In 1948 104,000,000 tons were transported and to-day it is over 120,000,000, in spite of the fact that the trains transporting coal to Cape Town and Port Elizabeth and East London have been reduced because greater use has been made of electricity during the last number of years. In spite of that the tonnage increased from 104,000,000 to 121,000,000 tons.

Attention should be devoted to this expansion, particularly to ensure that the Republic is not inconvenienced and does not suffer harm. There are extensive areas, particularly in the Cape Province, where there are no railway lines and where bus services have been introduced. I want to thank the Minister very heartily for that. I hope it will still be extended as a feeder service for the railway lines in the areas where we have no railway lines. In order to be able to afford these increased wages and increased pensions and the other improvements such as the purchase of trucks and locomotives, a capital expenditure of almost R 100,000,000 was necessary since 1948, over this period of 15 years. That proves that this side of the House had confidence in the economy of the country and that is why this large sum was invested. Hon. members opposite had no confidence and that is why when this Government took over in 1948 the transportation system of the country was in such a critical position that it could not handle the traffic. As I have said, there are higher pensions, improved housing, higher wages, and the railwaymen are happier, and in order to achieve all this it was necessary for this Government to increase the tariffs. However, that was done without increasing the cost of essential foodstuffs for the poor man, the pensioner and all of us. There are a whole list of articles I can mention. I can mention, e.g., flour, mealiemeal and similar foodstuffs. Many of the essential foodstuffs are not affected by this increase in tariffs. As far as the farmers are concerned, if their wool is neatly baled they still get a rebate of 10 per cent to-day from their nearest station to the coast. What has now happened in regard to these tariff increases? I want to make comparisons again and I want to take vegetables as an example of an item which is transported for almost 400 miles—140 lbs. of vegetables. Before the increase the tariff was 26.83c. After the increase on 1 September 1962 the tariff was 2.683 cents more, i.e. 2½ cents per 140 lbs. of vegetables. If I asked the hon. member now to tell me immediately by how much the cost of those vegetables has increased, he would not be able to tell me because it would be a very difficult sum to calculate, 2½ cents on 140 lbs. I am glad the hon. member for Wynberg has now come in. He made a great fuss about the increased tariffs. He told us how that would increase the cost of living. Let me just repeat it. in case the hon. member did not hear it …

I heard it.

Very well. Take the case of sugar. That is one of the staple foods. It cost 6.80c to transport 20 lbs. of sugar 214 miles. The increase is now just over ½c. That is just as difficult a sum to work out, because it is .6c on 20 lbs. It is minimal. I quite agree with the hon. member for Green Point (Maj. van der Byl) that the shopkeepers have abused the position. Because, for example, they could not work out the increase in the case of vegetables or sugar, they simply added ½c. Actually there should have been no increase in the case of sugar and vegetables. My time has almost expired, but I should like to mention a few other items. This is also something which the lesser privileged people use to a large extent, and it has to be transported over long distances. Most of the factories send their products from here to the Transvaal, and the factories in the Transvaal again send their products here. Now the tariff on a 51b. tin of food before 1962 was 6.42c. The increase is .68c, just over ½c. That ought not to increase the price of a tin, but still the shopkeepers again made use of that opportunity, and I will not be surprised if they increased it by 1c.

Now the important thing is coal. A great fuss is being made because the transportation of coal is now so much more expensive. The transportation costs of 1,000 lbs. of coal which has to be transported over a long distance amounted to 101 cents, and now it has been increased by 10.1 cents, which is less than 3d. or 2½ cents per bag. Can that increase the cost of living? How many people use so much coal? I used coal for years, and at the most I used four or five bags of coal a month on my farm. That amounts to an increase of 8d. a month. Surely that cannot increase the cost of living. But if the trader makes misuse of it and increases it by 5 cents, then it increased the cost of living. I have many other examples here, but I shall leave it there. In spite of the increased tariffs, the railwaymen are increasingly supporting the National Party. Not that I want to wage an election campaign here, but any person will support those who look after him, and I have adduced enough proof in regard to wages and housing and pensions to show that the Nationalist Government always has the interests of the railwaymen at heart, and therefore the Government deserves the support of the railwaymen.

Finally, I should like to congratulate the hon. the Minister on his excellent Budget. Personally I think that the Opposition cannot criticize it. If they want to criticize this Budget, then it will be like trying to battle against a thunderstorm. I also want to congratulate heartily the General Manager and the System Managers and all the officials and the staff for what they have contributed towards this excellent Budget.

The hon. member for De Aar (Colesberg) (Mr. M. J. de la R. Venter) appears to have found a lot of satisfaction in quoting percentage increases, the percentage increase of particular commodities as a result of the increased tariffs, and matters of that sort. I want to tell him that they are not the real proof of what is happening to the cost of living. The hon. member very conveniently forgot to mention the millions of extra rand which have been brought into the Railway revenue as a result of that increase, and he has offered no explanation at all as to where these millions have come from. It is quite obvious that they have not come out of thin air. Somebody must have had to pay for it, and the person who is paying most dearly—may be most expensively—is the ordinary family man in South Africa. I want to quote to the hon. member, not his percentage figures of 3d. on a tin or 2d. on a bag of coal. I want to quote to him the plight of the tens of thousands of mothers and housewives in this country who to-day are trudging from shop to shop in order to find where they can get necessary foodstuffs and commodities one or two cents cheaper. It is necessary for them to do that in order to come out on the monthly pay cheque or the weekly pay packet. Those women at the end of the day, tired and weary, have to go then home to prepare the evening meal for their families. Those are the people in respect by whom you can judge whether the cost of living has been increased. There is the answer to the hon. member and to his Government as to what this increase in tariffs has meant to the lower income groups and to the middle income groups, the white-collar people whose salaries and wages are fixed. They have no cost-of-living bonuses, they have no increase at the end of the month to draw on. And furthermore there are the people who live on pensions, on interest from their investments. Those are the people already suffering, and what they are now being forced to do is the answer to the hon. member who so lightly brushes aside the incidence of these tariff increases. That is one of the reasons attached to the first leg of our amendment, because we realize to the full just how deadly that increased cost of living is affecting the people of this country, all people, irrespective of race or colour—they are all suffering from it. And we say that on the evidence before us, both in the Minister’s Budget and in the Minister’s speeches, those increases have proved to be unjustified. The hon. Minister felt that if he had to grant the increases in salaries and wages long overdue to his railway personnel, he had to cover himself in some shape or form in case he might have a bigger deficit than what he had originally estimated. It stands without question that there is no Department of the State’s activities in this country which can have a bigger effect on the welfare of the everyday people of this country than the transport services. Sir, the cost of living, as it affects practically every person in South Africa—the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of clothing, in any shape or form, must be affected by transport. Practically everything that is needed for those services, the food, the equipment for building, the equipment for agriculture, the needs of the farmer on his land, national development as a whole, is affected thereby. In every case these commodities have to be moved around the country, either in their own basic form or in the finished processed form back to the urban areas and to the ports by our transport system, and anything which upsets the balance of that system, anything which increases that cost of movement must be reflected in some shape or form in the price of the commodity on which the ordinary citizen of this country has to depend. Every facet of life in the country is affected in some shape or form. I would put it this way, that the hon. the Minister who is no mean Minister of Railways—he has shown himself to be a pretty forceful Minister there—that on this occasion, he has shown an astonishing lack of faith in the ability of his own Administration, the ability of his own transport organization to meet the increased load which was being placed on it by the increased salaries and wages. And in making that decision, the hon. Minister had at his disposal all the figures, all the information, now available both in his speech and in his Budget—all the figures made available by a highly efficient staff. It need not have been a blind shot in this case. Just examine for a moment some passages from the hon. the Minister’s speech just to prove my contention. On page 3 when dealing with the question of exports, he said “advance orders for South African goods are encouraging”, not a question of a fall-off in trade. He continued “sugar, steel, anthracite, fresh and processed fruits and maize are good examples ”. These are all essential commodities in everyday life and the hon. the Minister tells us in his Budget speech that the advance orders in respect of all these various goods are encouraging. Then again on page 6 where he deals with the transport of goods and the Minister spoke of “a progressive approach to goods traffic as reflected in the truck-buying programme ”. He tells us that orders have been placed for a large number of wagons for the conveyance of fruits, or perishable and that 50 special cement tankers had been ordered for the movement of cement in bulk. He also tells us that provision is being made for the purchase of altogether 6,900 new goods wagons. Surely evidence enough to support my contention that the hon. Minister might have had more faith in his own organization, when he himself was providing for this additional income that his Railways were going to bring in. He should at least have had faith enough that what he was doing in this respect was justified, because if his business of transport was not going to require these additional 6,900 goods wagons, then the hon. Minister errs in providing them.

Go on to page 8, the movement of maize, one of the staple food products of this country, because maize in some shape or form has its place in almost the whole of the cereal products of this country, in all sorts of animal feed, in the dairy feed—you find maize linked up with it in some form or shape. The hon. Minister tells us on page 8 that the transport of maize this year has been at a rate of 2,000,000 bags a month, which is equivalent to 300 trainloads per month. Maize which provides the basic foodstuff for 80 per cent of the people of South Africa! The Minister had those figures to satisfy himself that he was getting the increased traffic and that he was going to get the increased income from it to meet the increased expenditure, and that there was therefore no need or very little need to panic about an increase in the tariffs. These are only some factors. As must be expected, the hon. the Minister when he allocated those various items which were to be exempted from the tariff increase, he selected a certain number of items which were what one may call the more important feeding items of the country or the more important items for industry. He extracted these from the list of commodities which would be subjected to the increase in tariffs. But that does not end the matter. The cost structure with all the wide ramifications whether affected by the Minister's increased tariffs, or in these other cases not affected by it, in its final result, the final cost to the consumer, rests on a very delicately balanced calculation in which not only the cost of transport, which certainly plays an important part, but also the cost of processing, the cost of manufacture also plays a part. Although the hon. Minister may have in some cases exempted the basic product from these increased rail tariffs, the other commodities which have to be put into the service of processing or packing it, wrapping it up, canning it, distributing it—a number of these commodities were not exempted and therefore they in turn add to the cost of the finished article, although that particular article in its basic form may not bear the increased tariff. So any decision which affects the cost structure should call for a most careful examination and a realization of the consequences, before that increase is agreed to. You see, any increase in the cost of transport must have repercussions right throughout the chain of production. The hon. Minister before deciding on those increases, had the evidence of practically one-half of the railway year to work upon. The figures in his own Estimates, the figures in his own speech show us the percentage increases which he had achieved up to that particular stage. He must have known by then that the danger not only existed that his action would increase the cost of living but also that as a result of the increased demands for transport services, there was very little likelihood that this danger would materialize. The Minister’s own figures in his Budget speech, as I say, show to my mind a remarkable lack of faith in the ability of his own Railways to carry both the salary increases and the increased traffic which was going to help to offset those salary increases. If you take page 3 of the hon. Minister’s Budget speech, you find that there was an average increase of goods traffic spread over a number of years of 2.5 per cent per annum. But the revenue for the particular year under discussion had already shown signs that that average was going to be increased. So the Minister had no fear of a fall in traffic. The 1962-3 Budget showed an estimated increase of 3,600,000 tons higher than the previous year. On page 12 of the Minister’s speech he deals with the parcels traffic, and he says that it increased beyond the capacity of the vans to handle the new record established. It says further that special parcel trains were operating with success in certain areas of the Transvaal, and that 200 special parcels’ vans had been ordered to be used exclusively on passenger trains. The express goods traffic between certain areas had more than doubled up to September 1962, and a total of 71,000 tons of express goods traffic had been carried. On page 11, we find figures in respect of the ordinary urban suburban traffic and we find there that 477 suburban motor and trailer coaches had to be ordered to try and keep pace with the increased demand for suburban transport, at a cost of R21,000,000. On page 5, the Minister deals with the locomotives required for the additional traffic and he says that the demand for electric locomotives is so great that 130 more electric units for the main lines had to be ordered at a cost of R16,500,000. Over 2,000,000 more tons of cargo were handled in the ports of the Republic and the number of ships handled increased by 515 up to a total of 14,500. Sir, each ton of cargo landed again adds to the demand for rail transport in some shape or form, each ton of cargo being exported has to be brought to the ports by some form of rail or road transport under the Minister’s control. Take road transport on page 14. The Minister quotes very substantial increases. He says “goods carried by road transport services showed an improvement of 213,000 tons for the first eight months of the present financial year and the indications are that the record tonnage carried last year will be exceeded ”. It is true that the hon. Minister goes on to say that despite this the working results were unfavourable and that the period mentioned reflected a loss of R150,000. But that is a bagatelle compared with the increase in traffic, and if that increase is a stable one and continues, it must convert the loss into a profit. Again, although the road transport section bringing the cargo to the railhead might incur a loss, this road transport is a feeder service to or from the railway line. You have to average up the total income from the two to see whether or not a road service is justified. If it was not justified, it would not be run. Then the Minister says that the operation of the S.A. Airways has been satisfactory. “The first eight months of the present financial year in comparison with the corresponding period last year showed an increase of 12.5 per cent in passengers, 37 per cent in mail ton-miles and 16.8 per cent in freight ton-miles.” As you go through the report, it presents a picture of increased activity, of bigger income, of a bigger demand for the services of the Railways, and, as I say, the hon. Minister showed a very sorry appreciation of the stability of his own organization in not accepting that evidence and so avoiding an increase in tariffs. There is nothing in the overwhelming evidence furnished by the hon. Minister himself, which shows any justification for his increase in the tariffs, and by so doing, the hon. the Minister has set up unsettling effects in the living cost structure of the country, effects which must have their repercussions right throughout the country.

What has been the actual effect of the Minister’s action? On the one hand it is felt as a definite spiral increase in living costs right throughout the country, and particularly in the daily normal household requirements of the people of this country: Foodstuffs, clothing, transport, electricity. The hon. member for Wynberg quoted figures just in respect of this one area, the increased cost of electricity, and electricity figures in every facet of the life of this country. It is not confined to switching on lights in homes, but practically every appliance in the home is being electrified to-day, and the slightest increase in the cost of current for domestic use or for commercial use or for agricultural use must again have its effect in an increase in the cost of living. As I said, probably the hardest-hit of all groups, is the white-collar group, the middle-income groups, who work month after month for a fixed salary, with no hope of something extra in their pay-packet at the end of the month. They have to scratch to meet the increased cost of living. The only way is to cut down on certain items and thus eventually reducing their own standard of living. They are probably the hardest hit. But we also have the wage-earners, the pensioners. The pensioners are the forgotten section in last year’s Railway Budget. From the figures presented to us, it is quite apparent that the increase to pensioners should have been granted last year without any detriment to the service at all. Those are men and women who by their service in the past have laid the foundation of the stability enjoyed by the Railways to-day. They have had to wait a year, but they had not only to wait a year. They have had to wait a year during which the effects of the increase granted to their friends and the Minister’s increased tariff costs in order to meet those increases, added to their discomfort. The things they had to buy out of their pensions which had not received a bonus, increased in price, and therefore they could get less for their pensions. The increases granted to them to-day, are not only fully justified, but they are very long overdue. They have nothing to thank the Minister for in regard to what they are getting this year. They have given a lifetime of service to the Railways and they are merely getting back something that belongs to them and should have been paid to them last year.

Look at it from another angle: The railway worker as a whole has received an increase in his salary or wages, a justified increase, an increase which this side of the House had been arguing about for quite a long time. But what is happening to it? Is it not a fact, Sir, that the men who receive these increases to-day, find that their increase in pay is completely offset by the additional cost of living which they now have to face, and that where they might have expected perhaps a little bit of more generous living, a little bit of advancement in his standard of living comforts, he now has to use up the odd few extra shillings which might have helped him in that respect, use them to meet the increased railage costs of the ordinary commodities which go to make up his everyday household requirements, his food, his sugar, his transport, all these things. It is all part of the vicious circle. In fact although they have got an increase in the actual amount of money received, it is very little real benefit to the railway workers because that increase has to be paid out again. It is all very well for the hon. member for De Aar (Colesberg) to get up here and blame the storekeepers for not playing the game, by passing on these costs and adding to them. That is the old, old story of drawing a red-herring across the trail. The producer has not got the additional benefit, the middleman has got very little additional benefit out of it. It is all part of the general circle which is built up once you start an increase in transport costs.

I want to turn very briefly to another aspect of the hon. Minister’s speech, and that is the question of the pipeline. That falls under the portion of our amendment which deals with the wider interests of the country. I would say that not only in regard to the pipeline, which has been adequately dealt with by previous speakers—and it is inconceivable there that any reduction in cost of the movement of petrol which may be brought about by the pipeline should not be passed on to the consumer—but there is also another aspect and that is the position of the setting up in this country of a ship-building industry.

We have had a commission that has brought out a report, and they have specified certain sites, particularly at Durban, and in a smaller degree at Cape Town that could be used for that purpose. Now what have we found over the last few weeks. We have found that one of the major engineering concerns in the country has had to issue a statement that they are unable to proceed with certain plans and schemes they had in respect of Durban Harbour because they have been informed that a committee operating under the control of the South African Railway Administration has not yet been able to formulate its proposals and has not yet been able to deal with the matter, and therefore the question of the allocation of the sites has not yet been agreed to. There again, is the railway hand on private enterprise in the country, railway delay. It is only a matter of luck that the sites happen to fall within the area of certain of the major ports of the country and so they fall under the Railways. But, Sir, the idea of a ship-building industry is nothing new. It has been on the cards for several years now. We have heard about the Bay-head site in Durban long enough, to almost know the position by heart, and surely it is time that the Railway Administration made up its mind what it is going to do. I read in the Press recently that there was a suggestion—heaven hope that it is not true— that the Railways are seriously considering taking the control of the shipbuilding industry in this country under its own wing. Heaven hope that that is not true. If ever there was an industry which requires specialist treatment, which requires private enterprise it is the ship-building industry. And the sooner the country can get that position settled, and the sooner the engineering firms who are desirous of going ahead in that direction can proceed, the better it will be for our country. It is not only ship building as such that is affected. A number of our basic industries will be affected by it: The steel industry to provide the necessary steel to build ships; the electrical industry for all the equipment that the ship requires, the agricultural industry for the wherewithal to stock the ships when they are in commission, the textile industry—you can see its implications in respect of practically every basic industry, and it is a clear indication of the justification of that leg of our amendment in which we criticize the railway interests for subordinating the general interests of the country for its own ends. I can only express the hope there that it will not be long before not only in Durban but also in Cape Town a decision is reached with the Administration which will allow private enterprise to go ahead and not only allow it to go ahead, but do everything in its power to encourage it to go ahead and to assist it in the development of a shipbuilding industry which can be of such enormous importance to this country.

Your facts are all wrong. You base your argument on false premises.

I hope the hon. the Minister will be able to convince me of that when he replies to the debate. I want to touch on another point altogether. I do not want to be unfair to the hon. the Minister because I believe that the Minister, as a Minister of Railways— and I emphasize that—has been a forceful Minister. He came in at a time when it was necessary for the Railways to have a forceful Minister, and by his drive, although on many occasions we disagreed with his methods and his decisions, there is no doubt that he has put the Railways back into a position where they can meet the traffic demands of the country and cope with the traffic being offered. The Minister has in his Budget speech given an indication that he proposes to continue on those lines. So with the reservations that we disagree at times with his methods and his decisions, we accept, in fairness to him, that he has done a service to the country. But I want to say that the Railways alone cannot solve the transport requirements of this country. The development of the country, the welfare of the people, the daily needs of commerce and industry, of agriculture, of mining and of the other primary industries—all of those things on which the progress of the country must depend, they need all the transport services we can give them. They must be able to depend on the most efficient coordination between all the forms of transport, Rall, sea transport, air transport and road transport, to serve the various areas of the country. All these must be co-ordinated, and none of those services should be exploited to better the position of another section of the transport system. If the country is to progress and if the people are to get the best return on the money they spend on this system, it is imperative to have a well-balanced and well-coordinated transport system, exploiting to the full the economic advantages of each form of transport. It is even more important than ever before that this overall transport system should be visualized now, that we should start building it now before the implications of the Orange River Scheme become too wide, because if ever there is something which will put an extra strain on the transport of this country, it will be the development of that scheme. I say we must give full scope to the business efficiency of each of these various sections of transport, so that each can be used to the best advantage, and that regard should also be had to private enterprise, not only to provide the necessary transport, but by its competition it can increase the efficiency of these other sections of State transport. I think we should give a greater measure of local autonomy to each of these competing sections of transport, Rall, sea, air and road. I believe the time has come for the Minister of Railways. He has a staff who have rightly been praised to-day for the magnificent work they are doing. I believe that he should forget that he is only the Minister of Railways and instead become the Minister of Transport, so that all the interests of the various sections of the transport system can be co-ordinated. He should try to build up a complete transport system in which the most modern methods of transport are used, irrespective of their effects the one on the other, developed and used to the best advantage of the country as a whole.

I shall return to the hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) later on but I think the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) has to-day displayed a little more wisdom and responsibility in his speech than before. When you think of his replies in previous years to the Minister’s Budget speech you will remember those irresponsible remarks about “ministerial and managerial inefficiency ”. On this occasion he at least went so far as to decide that the General Manager of Railways was “efficient” but I want to agree with him that you cannot help but express your hearty gratitude to the railway personnel. I wish to point out in particular that it is not only the General Manager of Railways but the entire management who must be thanked and I want to add my gratitude and appreciation, in the first place, to the members of the Railway Board for the very efficient service which they have rendered to the Railways and to South Africa over the past years. I also wish to express my gratitude to the two Deputy General Managers, the five assistant General Managers and the Financial Manager. In my opinion the Financial Manager occupies a very important position because he is the person who has to keep a watchful eye over the funds which are voted by Parliament and who, with the assistance of the whole management, has to see that that money is correctly spent. Then also my sincere gratitude to the Chief of the Division of Planning and Productivity. I have already said on a previous occasion that because these important functions of the management of the Railways have been divided we are already reaping the fruits of the improved planning and the more judicious spending of money by this Board and its various sub-divisions. We noticed in the recent unauthorized expenditure that the expenditure was appreciably less last year than in previous years. I personally believe, and I think any person who has any business knowledge will agree with me, that the secret of the success of any business lies in its management, in the proper management of all the divisions of such a business. I think the Minister and his management are on the right road and that they are making the Railways more and more efficient and I believe that we have already had proof of that in that over the past year the Railways have conveyed a much greater tonnage with a considerably smaller staff. I regard that as conclusive proof of the efficiency of the management.

However, I do not always understand the hon. member for Wynberg. He is a person who is held in high esteem in the business world. He comes here and in his wisdom he says that everybody is “efficient” but that the Minister, the head of the entire organization, is “inefficient”. He displays “ministerial inefficiency ”. If I can give that hon. member for Wynberg some good advice, I think it will be fitting for him to acquire a little greater wisdom and to show this House and the country that he really has a sense of responsibility by also expressing his gratitude to the hon. the Minister for the almost super human part he has played in the development of the South African Railways. He should be grateful and give thanks where thanks and appreciation are due. By doing that you do not grow smaller but bigger. I also wish to remind the hon. member that since the Minister has taken over this portfolio he has put everything into the struggle. He even said at that time that he was prepared to stake his political career in order to set the wheels of the Railways in motion. Once you have smoked a pipe and you are very attached to it it is not an easy thing to give it up, and the hon. the Minister even threw in his beloved pipe in order to set the wheels of the Railways in motion. I also want to remind the hon. member that the Railways do not belong to the National Government, but to the people of South Africa and that it is equally the duty of the Opposition and of the hon. member to assist the Minister of Railways with constructive criticism and advice and not to advance destructive criticism. However, I fully understand that it is the right and the privilege of the Opposition to pay court to the votes of the railwaymen because they constitute an important factor at elections, more especially if you take into account the fact that according to the memorandum which was Tabled by the Minister there were 111,688 White railwaymen in the service of the Railways on 17 December 1962. If you consider the fact that about 80 per cent of them are married men, it means that there are a further 89,262 women, the wives of the railwaymen. That gives you a total of 201,000 people who can vote at an election and it is worth your while to pay court to that number of votes. I admit that, but if the hon. member for Wynberg wishes to get the votes of the railwaymen I want to give him this good advice to desist belittling their Minister, because he knows as well as I do that the railwaymen together with their wives, stand as steadfast as a rock behind their Uncle Ben Schoeman and when he gives them the green light they give full steam and the wheels move all the faster.

I now come to the speech of the hon. member for Wynberg when he conveyed the gratitude of the Opposition to the Minister and I want to quote the hon. member’s own words, because he was so kind as to give me his speech and I wish to thank him for that. He said—

I find it very strange that that should come from the shadow Minister of Railways on the other side. He says that the Opposition have always felt and have always alleged that the Superannuation Fund which stands at about R3 05,000,000 at the moment, was strong enough for the Minister to pay increased special allowances from that Fund. I feel sorry for the poor railwaymen if this hon. member should ever become Minister if that is the stupid thing he wants to do, namely, to use the Superannuation Fund to increase the temporary allowances of the railwaymen. It amazes me because the Minister said very clearly in his Budget speech that the amount by which the allowances were increased would amount to R1, 380,000 per annum, that he had not included that in his Budget but that it would be included in his Additional Estimates later on and that we would have to vote it. The argument is therefore completely wrong.

However, to return to the story of the hon. member that the Minister “has at last done for the pensioners” what the Opposition has always asked him to do. In that respect the hon. member for De Aar (Colesberg) (Mr. M. J. de la R. Venter) has given us a full exposition of how the pensions have increased over the past years, from 1948-62, but I do not want to repeat that. I merely wish to emphasize one point in particular and that is that when cost-of-living allowances were consolidated and the pensionable allowances were consolidated with salaries, the railway servants did not contribute one additional cent from the increased salaries which they received. The Minister added that to their salaries so that it was not necessary for them to contribute a single cent to the increased pension which they would receive. According to information which I have obtained those allowances amounted to a considerable sum, over the R11,000,000. and the railway servants would have had to contribute approximately an additional R3,000,000 on the rand for rand basis but they did not pay that; it was simply added to their salaries.

I do not want to say much more about the pensions of the railwaymen, but I just want to add this interesting fact namely that before 1948 the widow of the poor railway servant did not receive a pension. There was no widows’ pension. Nor was there a widows’ pension fund after 1910. Prior to 1910 there was indeed a widows’ pension fund in the Cape Province but it was not taken over at the time of Union and it was the National Government which remedied that defect which had existed all the years and who in 1951 created a widows’ pension scheme in Act 63, and who amended that Act further in 1956 so that the widow of a railway servant to-day is ensured of a steady income as long as she lives; and, note this, Sir, even if that widow should re-marry, she still does not lose her pension, something which I think is very important.

I just want to give an example. No two railway servants’ pensions are the same, of course, nor that of their widows; that is simply impossible, but I took the trouble to find an example to show the considerable improvement which was brought about after the Act was amended in 1956 and how considerably the widows’ pensions had improved. I want the Opposition to listen to this. Before 1948, if a driver, Class I, with 35 years’ service had retired in 1947, he would have received a cash payment of R1, 851 and a monthly pension of R27.5. The figures were also given by the hon. member for Colesberg, but I just want to show what the widow will receive. If that same person retires to-day, he will receive a cash payment of R3,366 and a monthly pension of R72.7 plus a temporary allowance and if his wife is still alive he receives a temporary allowance of R30. Now I come to the widow. If that same servant were to die to-day one year before he reaches the retiring age, his widow will receive a cash payment of R 1,999 plus a monthly pension of R40.9 plus a temporary allowance and if she still has children who are dependant on her she will receive R30 per month and if she is a single person she will only receive R13 per month. That means she gets R40.9 plus R30, or if she is single, plus R13. But if the same person died a year before he was due to retire in 1948, his widow would have received a meagre pension of R20. If that man dies in 1963, that is, after he has already gone on pension and after he has already received his globular sum, the widow cannot again receive that amount because her husband already received it, but if he dies after he has received the globular sum his widow will still receive R41.6 per month plus a temporary allowance of R30 if she has dependants or R13 she is single. I want to emphasize that the temporary allowances are there for widows as well as for the railway servant, and where there are dependants the widow or the railway servant receives the full sum of R30. I therefore simply cannot understand how the hon. member for Wynberg can say anything as stupid as that “at long last” the Minister has done it. I do not know whether “cock-and-bull stories” are still permissible, Sir, but I should say that this was a real “cock-and-bull story” which we had from the hon. member. You said, Mr. Speaker, that it could be used in a different atmosphere and I think the atmosphere allows that term to be used to-day.

I now come to the speech of the hon. member where he alleged that the Minister had eventually taken the advice of the Opposition to increase the salaries of the railwaymen. The hon. member for Colesberg has already given the figures relating to the improvements but I think I should add something and it is this. If we again refer to the memorandum which the Minister Tabled, we will notice that in 1948-9 already R14,700,000 was voted for increased salaries, R3,800,000 in 1949-50, in 1951-2 R28,000, in 1952-3 R4,000,000, in 1953-4 R8,260,000, in 1954-5 R2,910,000, in 1955-6 R9,060,000, in 1956-7 R7,400,000 in the next year R649,000, in 1958-9 R14,773,000, in 1959-60 R8,000,000, in 1960-1 R63,000 and in 1961-2 R3,370,000. If you look at the top of the page, Sir, you will find that the salary increases for this year amount to no less than R24,485,000 which gives you a total over the past years, since 1948-63, of R134,920,000. The hon. member for Wynberg now says very wisely that the United Party has always told the Minister that salaries should be increased. No, that is an untruth. Salaries have gone up because the Minister said very clearly that he could not make the wheels of the railways turn and that he could not convey the traffic which was offered without the co-operation of a satisfied staff. I can assure the Opposition that if the profits of the Railways should increase further in future, the wages and salaries of the railwaymen will be increased further. It has already been pointed out that the rationalization of salaries and wages has brought about a considerable change. The hon. member for Simonstown in his wisdom says that these salary increases have really not been of any assistance because all the benefits which the poor railway servant receives by way of an increase in salary, are offset by the 10 per cent tariff increase. I really think the hon. member for Simonstown realizes himself that he is talking nonsense and I shall prove that that is the case. In 1962, before salaries were adapted, prior to rationalization, a railway worker received R69 per month and after salaries had been raised and the tariffs increased by 10 per cent he gets a salary of R80. Does the hon. member for Simonstown contend that the tariff increase amounts to no less than R11 to that railway worker? He has received a salary increase of R11, but now that tariffs have been increased, that R11 is cancelled out and he is exactly where he was.

When did he get it?

He got it in 1962 before tariffs were increased, he got R69. In 1963, after tariffs had been increased, he got R80, a difference of R11 per month. The hon. member now alleges that the 10 per cent tariff increase has cancelled out the R11 salary increase. I think the hon. member himself realizes that a child in Sub A would be better able than he to calculate that little sum.

The hon. member for Wynberg also referred to the fact that the Minister had 18 meetings with representatives of staff organizations. He suggested that the staff associations should really get the credit for it that the railwaymen’s salaries have been increased and adapted. I just want to point out that that argument of the hon. member is completely fallacious. Had the Minister been so unsympathetic towards the railwaymen surely he would have been satisfied to accent the lowest possible increase which the staff associations recommended, but that was not what happened. There were cases where the staff associations recommended a certain salary and where the Minister and the management increased those salaries still further. The staff association recommended, for example, that a learner stoker should receive R65 per month but the management did not leave it at R65; the management said: No, the work which a learner stoker does is worth R80 per month and that is why the learner stoker does not get the R65 recommended by the staff associations, but R80 per month. Take the case of station foremen. The staff associations recommended that a station foreman should receive R135 per month and eventually the management approved of a salary of R145 per month. Take signalmen. The staff associations recommended that a signalman should receive R135 per month and the management increased it to R145. In the case of an artisan the staff association recommended R165 per month and the management and the Minister fixed it at R172. Take constables. The staff association recommended R139 per month and to-day that constable receives R150 per month, To me that proves conclusively that it is not the object of the Minister to exploit the railway servants and to see what is the smallest, the lowest salary which he can get away with. No, all grades are treated according to the importance of the service they render. I can really give the assurance to the hon. member for Wynberg that never before in the whole history of the S.A. Railways has the staff been as satisfied and happy as they are under present circumstances, not only with their salaries, but with their general treatment and their improved conditions of employment. Unfortunately I have not got the figure with me, and I do not know whether it is available, but I wonder what colossal amount was spent by the Administration to improve the conditions of service of the railway servants. I have in mind particularly the artisans at Danskraal who had to weld those long rails in the boiling sun. In spite of the fact that the hon. member for Drakensberg (Mrs. S. M. van Niekerk) asked for it the Minister decided of his own accord to build a shelter for them under absolutely impossible conditions and at a tremendously high cost. Just think of what is being done for the artisan staff, the drivers, the stokers and the other staff who have to do dirty work, work which ruins their clothes. Just think of all the facilities which have been placed at their disposal. When that person returns home from his work, it is no longer necessary for him to ride through the streets in his dirty clothes and to be pointed out as a railwayman. He has his “locker” in which he keeps his clothes; he can first go and have a bath and clean himself properly. In addition he receives a “dirt allowance” as they call it with which to buy soap. to-day he can return home properly dressed.

The hon. member for De Aar-Colesberg also referred to the colossal contribution made by the Administration to meet the housing needs of the railway servants. I do not want to go into that again, but there has been one particular need to which the Railway Administration has given much attention over the last year and that is the housing of unmarried railway servants, the establishment of railway hostels. I want to express a special word of thanks and appreciation this afternoon for that service which has been rendered to the unmarried members of the staff. Mr. Speaker, you will be surprised to hear in what a difficult position those unmarried men found themselves. The majority of those unmarried men do not come from the place where they work. They usually come from elsewhere. I have in mind a place like Bethlehem where there are no fewer than 121 unmarried White railway servants at the moment whose parents do not live at Bethlehem. They come from elsewhere; they are young men; they come there as strangers and then have to look for accommodation. In many cases they are unable to find decent accommodation and if they do succeed in getting it, the minute the boarding house keeper learns that she has to prepare a tin of food for the poor youngster, he will only be there a month and the following month she will say to him: No, son, I do not mind boarding you, but I simply do not see my way clear to prepare that tin for you. I have investigated the position thoroughly and I can assure you, Sir. that many of those young boys board under difficult circumstances. The locomotive foreman at Bethlehem, who, in parenthesis, is the youngest foreman in the entire Railway Service —he is 35 years of age— is a very able young man who is very interested in those who work under him. He told me the other day that if there was one place where there was a need for a railway hostel then it was Bethlehem. I have already made the necessary representations to the General Manager and I hope he will see to it that a hostel is erected there.

I do not want to say any more; I do not think it is necessary. The attacks which we have had from the Opposition were so weak that it is not worth one’s while reacting to them. The hon. member for Wynberg and other members opposite said that they were very satisfied with the increased salaries and wages but they complained about the 10 per cent tariff increase. The hon. member for Bloemfontein (East) (Mr. van Rensburg) and the hon. member for De Aar-Colesberg have already pointed out that the increased tariff in respect of important foods and necessities of life only constituted an increase in the cost of living of 33 cents per month. The hon. member for Wynberg now contends that 33 cents is a considerable sum of money and that the lowly paid, the pensioners, are the people who have to pay it. It has been stated very clearly that there are numbers and numbers of articles to which this increase does not apply. Groundnuts, for example, are excluded; the same applies to groundnut meal, lucerne, lucerne meal, stockfeed, kaffir corn and ordinary corn, cornflour, maize, mealie meal, sugar cane, milk, cream, power paraffin, crude oil, tinned fish, tinned meat, wool, mohair, as well as passenger fares on trains and aeroplanes. Nor does the increased tariff apply to the transportation of commodities which are subject to export tariffs. When you consider what the monthly increase is in the cost of living as a result of the increase in tariffs, I really do not think it is worth while making a fuss over it. I really do not think that there is a single family who is not prepared to pay 33 cents per month in order to make this increase in the salaries and wages of railwaymen possible. Thirty-three cents is not even the price of a packet of 50 cigarettes.

Where the hon. the Minister told us in his Budget speech of the tremendously greater task which rested on the Railway because of the new expansion and the colossal development of our industries and of our agriculture, I want to conclude by expressing the hope that the Minister, the management and the staff will have strength and courage to perform the great and important task which awaits them but I want to add this: I have full faith and confidence that they will meet the challenge which has been issued to them.

I do not intend to follow the hon. member for Bethlehem (Mr. Knobel) in all the detail he has given the House in the course of his speech. I do want to say, however, that in so far as pension benefits are concerned, I had hoped that the pensioner receives consideration from both sides of the House not for political purposes but on grounds of humanity and as a token of appreciation of services rendered to the State. Therefore it is only natural that we on this side of the House should express pleasure at the fact that the Minister has been able in his recent Budget to provide improved benefits for deserving pensioners. I also want to say this to the hon. member for Bethlehem. He seems to regard the purpose of an Opposition in criticizing as merely an attempt to find fault, but primarily, of course, the purpose of criticism is to remove what is wrong or questionable in administration. I think that has been the purpose of hon. members on this side in the Budget debate thus far, and that is certainly what I shall endeavour to do.

Sir, September 1962 is sure to go down in the annals of the Railways as the month when the Minister took fright and then blundered. It is admittedly an agreeable blunder so far as Railway finances are concerned, but for the economy of the country as a whole it is a most grotesque blunder. And I will tell the House, Sir, why the Minister took fright. It was on 1 September that the Minister was finally persuaded, after much dithering and delay, to commit Railway finances to an all-round wage increase estimated to cost R12.250,000 for the remaining seven months of the current financial year, 1962-3. As other hon. members have indicated it was a deserving wage adjustment and it was one which everyone knew had to come. At that state the Administration was showing a profitable return on working for the year and Government spokesmen were assuring everyone that boom days were near at hand—just around the corner, as they put it. As the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) has indicated, the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council had met just a few weeks earlier—the exact dates were 20 and 21 August—to consider how best the country’s economy could be stimulated. Taking into account no doubt, amongst other things, that the Railway accounts as at that date were well in surplus—and the Minister has indicated that the surplus at the end of August was of the order of R4,400,000—the Council decided to recommend to the Government the introduction what it called “growth point economic planning budgeting ”. I think it is fair to assume that a reasonable wage increase for railwaymen was in the minds of members of the Council as one of the methods of stimulating growth point economy, while they doubtless also had regard to the fact that the Railways were working profitably at the time and that this stimulation of a wage increase would in no way add to the cost structure for the rest of the economy. I say that it is fair to make that assumption because it is quite unthinkable that a high-powered body such as the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council would have left Railway finances and Railway rating out of account in its deliberations on the subject of finding ways and means of stimulating economic growth points. But be that as it may, this at any rate is certain: The Council was at pains to stress the absolute need for co-ordinated budgeting in the public sector of the economy. The Railway Administration, of course, falls in the public sector of the economy. But what this Council did not take into account was, firstly, that budgeting, let alone co-ordinated budgeting, is not this Minister’s strong point and, secondly, they did not take into account that after making a wage concession the Minister would be frightened out of his wits by the spectre of another Railway deficit. It is quite evident that the 1958-9 deficit of over R16,000,000 still haunts the hon. gentleman, he cannot forget it, and in September he remembered it very much. That is why I say he took fright. You see, just one week after committing the Railway finances to this wage increase for railwaymen, the Minister immediately increased tariffs by clamping on a 10 per cent surcharge on the carriage of all goods except those which are set out in a privilege short list. The Burger in dealing with the method of increasing rates, refers to it as “tariewe sterk opgestoot ”. In his Budget statement last week the hon. the Minister, on the other hand, claimed that he had acted “with the utmost circumspection” in clamping on this 10 per cent arbitrary increase in rates. According to the dictionary definition of that word, he took everything into account before he acted. But, Sir, I ask how that is possible when it is so clear—and the Minister himself made that perfectly clear—that he ignored to take into account the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council’s advice. The significant fact is that the Minister has a representative on that Council, and either therefore his representative had been kept in the dark, also with the utmost circumspection, or he himself was obliged to keep the Council in the dark.

I do not think the Minister knew that they were sitting.

I hardly think that the Minister did not know that they were sitting when he has a representative on the Council himself. If that is the Minister’s explanation I think he should enlarge upon it. Sir, had the other members of the Council known what was to come, their Chairman at least would surely have explained, along with Lewis Carroll—

And that is precisely how it was to be. The hippopotamus manoeuvre of the hon. the Minister has put a mighty spanner into the Council’s idea of “growth point economic planning and budgeting” and it has certainly put “paid” to the Council’s idea about coordinated budgeting in the public sector of the economy. But the other factor, of course, is that in the process this Minister has shown the utmost scorn not only for the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council but also for his own Railway Rating Commission under the chairmanship of Dr. Schumann which is investigating this question of rating at the present time.

Last year I had occasion to comment on the Minister’s cavalier attitude to capital spending by the administration. The Controller and Auditor-General on the other hand, quite rightly gives close attention to this important side of railway finance. As far as the Minister is concerned, and I am afraid also as far as the administration is concerned, it is evident that the capital account is regarded on both sides as an orphan. This year again the Minister, like the stony-hearted stepmother, treats the orphan with stony silence in his Budget address, and the Administration, equally stony-hearted, gives the orphan little or no mention at all in the White Paper except for the usual dull list of proposed new works for 1963-4. Sir, I hasten to say that last year the Minister courteously gave a reply to my comment and to-day I with equal courtesy say that the Minister chose merely to trifle with the subject in his reply. I quote his exact words—

The Minister merely trifled with a difficult task in an attempt to avoid it. No one expects the Minister to justify the expenditure on each of 1,400 items or projects. The Minister of Finance does not do so, but the Minister of Finance does give an analysis of capital spending for the year; he compares capital spending for the current year with the past year, and he does try to justify capital spending at the rate proposed and to show that it is in the public interest. That hon. Minister’s Loan Budget and this hon. Minister’s Capital Budget are the accepted financial barometers to which the private sector of the economy looks when planning its own capital development programme year by year. Moreover, the Treasury in their monthly returns reveal how capital outlay is progressing throughout the year. But capital spending by the Administration is kept a mystery from the start to the finish. Only by tabling questions in Parliament does one get any light on this dark side of Railway budgeting. Why, I ask the hon. the Minister, keep it so dark if there is really nothing to hide; why trifle with this important side of public budgeting, as the Minister does, and leave the House and the public to guess? I shall quote figures for the three years which show what the results are. It seems to me that these results may well serve to explain why capital spending is treated in such a cavalier way by the hon. the Minister. I have quoted what the Minister said last year, and it is obvious that he claims that the Brown Book gives all the information that may be needed by this House and by the business world. Let us see what actually happened. Based on the Brown Book for 1960-1, Parliament was required to appropriate R132,000,000 from loan funds for that year whereas in fact only slightly more than half that amount was needed and could be put to use. The result being that some R60,000,000 was surrendered to the Treasury at the end of the year. Where the Minister and his Brown Book were 45 per cent out in capital budgeting. Then take last year’s figures, the figures for 1961-2. According to the Brown Book, R85,000,000 was demanded but again only R60,000,000 was put to use. That is certainly slightly better, but the Minister and his Brown Book were wrong again, on this occasion to the extent of 30 per cent. For the current year 1962-3, the demand, according to the Brown Book, was for R70,000,000. Up to the end of February, 1963, some R50,000,000 had been put to use, leaving exactly one month to apply the balance. It seems to me that the Minister and his Brown Book may well be some 20 per cent out for the current year. Sir, that to me is a sad record of hit-and-miss budgeting on capital account for three years in succession. But the more serious aspect in my view is that the Minister chooses to leave everyone in the dark by omitting from his Budget address last year, and also this year, any reference to these distressing results and to this bad financial estimating on capital account. In those circumstances is it to be wondered at that organized industry in South Africa was recently constrained to say this—

Sir, that is a very serious indictment to make against the business or intellectual morality of any public undertaking, let alone an undertaking of such a standing as the Railway Administration. I hope that that comment may influence the hon. gentleman not to trifle any longer with this serious and important subject of capital budgeting. I have repeatedly urged the hon. Minister to have a proper appraisal made as regards debt redemption. Capital debt and capital financing can no longer be treated in the haphazard methods of the past years. I said last year that the Minister would be well advised to take a leaf out of the British Railways book. There active steps are being taken to separate what is called “live debt” from the accumulated unproductive debt over the years that have passed. Here on the other hand the Minister turns the Administration’s blind eye to the problem. Up to last year the Minister’s stock reply to any suggestion of reform from this side has always been: “Do you want to see a rise in tariffs?” Sir, the obvious has now happened. The Minister has pushed up tariffs substantially. He may of course appease his own conscience by saying that wage improvements “cannot be met by other than an increase in rates ”. The hon. Minister knows that the real reason is a different one. Throughout the whole of his term of office this Minister has made no attempt to relate capital spending with returns on working. The inevitable result therefore has been that practically after every injection of new capital into the Railways there has developed a state of diminishing returns on capital investment. The Minister’s sole remedy has always been in the past, as it is to-day, to raise tariffs. As recently as last session I asked the Minister how he proposed to avoid a rise in tariffs in the light of current methods of financial administration. The Minister as much as admitted in his reply that an increase could not be avoided. His actual words were these: “It is quite possible; I am not saying it is probable, but it is quite possible”, So it has been, Sir. It has happened.

The loan agreement between the Government and the U.S.A. Export-Import Ban, to my mind, reflects how serious is the need for a better approach to capital finance. After a loan of some 16,000,000 American dollars had been negotiated—the local equivalent being R11, 400,000—a sum of R9,290,000 was drawn leaving a balance of R2,110,000. According to the terms of this agreement the loan was granted by that bank on a redemption basis, namely that repayment had to be made over eleven half-yearly instalments. Two significant matters arise from this transaction. The first is that the balance of R2,110,000 has not been drawn. The Controller and Auditor-General explains this and I quote from his report for the year 1961-2. He says—

I hope the Minister will give the House a fuller explanation than that. In the face of the explanation as reported by the Controller and Auditor-General, it leaves one with the feeling that it was financial administration that was at fault in not being able to satisfy the demands of the bank. I hope that that was not the case and I hope the Minister will say so. I hope he will explain precisely what is meant by this term “difficulty … in obtaining documentation to the satisfaction of the bank ”. It might leave the impression that this international bank was in doubt about what it was being provided with. I feel therefore that in respect of a matter of such importance, not only to the standing of the Administration as such but to the country, a fuller explanation should be given with regard to this decision not to operate and not to withdraw the full amount of the loan granted. According to the evidence the offer was originally to have expired on 24 March 1961 and it was at the specific request of the Administration that the period was then extended by the bank to June 1962. The second significant factor in regard to this loan is that on 31 March 1962 the capital indebtedness on this loan stood in the books of the Administration at R9,290,000. On that same date, however, that debt stood in the books of the Treasury at only R6.840,000. The reason for this book-entry discrepancy is that debt redemption is made by Treasury whereas no debt redemption is made by the Railways. On the Railways side the debt burden goes on indefinitely. I think it is quite safe to say that no other business in the whole of South Africa is financed in such a happy-go-lucky fashion. No other business undertaking could possibly operate with this carefree abandon to the raising and repayment of capital funds. I think it is axiomatic that carefree responsibility borders on irresponsibility. No wonder that the figures are getting alarmingly big. Over the first 15 years of Union, capital expenditure on the Railways was increasing at the rate of well below R7,000,000 a year. The competitor against the Railways in those days was the ox-wagon, so practically any outlay of capital would therefore have been justifiable and would have been profitable. Over the past 15 years capital expenditure has increased at the rate of more than R70,000,000 per annum. This at a time when transport competition is keen, when it is brought about by keen business intellect and when it is backed by keen capital investment. That is what makes this position of turning a blind eye to the whole question of capital management and capital redemption so alarming.

How do you suggest should it be done?

I have suggested over and over again in this House that the hon. Minister should investigate the matter. It is not a matter in respect of which I have a rule of thumb answer ready for him. I can only see the dangers that lie ahead if the capital burden goes on increasing at the rate it does in a highly competitive world such as we have to-day. Originally the ox-wagon constituted the competition and our method of thinking is still that we are competing against the oxwagon. This question should be thoroughly investigated by experts so that we can get away from this ox-wagon mentality and have a far more modern concept in regard to this matter. I say that quite seriously again this year because the Minister is now planning to add to this monopolistic empire of carefree capital commitment the building and operating of a pipe-line from Durban to the Rand. When this pine-line is in operation it will mean that oil will then be conveyed by pipe instead of by train. Already Sir, a strong case is made out for reduction of railway rates on petrol and other motor spirits. The consumers on the Rand are paying 6.2c, or 20 per cent more per gallon than the consumers at the coast. By this blatant form of monopoly taxation the consumers in that area are contributing much of the Railways R12,000,000 annual profits on the railage of petrol. I can only say that it is an iniquitous penalty on the consumers of petrol to subsidize the other users of the Railways. I repeat therefore that a strong case is made out for the reduction of tariffs which already exists. The position gets more serious having listened to the hon. the Minister’s Budget address in which he gave the probably capital outlay in regard to this pipeline. I am afraid I share the views of organized industry about the estimates being of doubtful accuracy when the capital cost of this is given by the hon. Minister as R20,000,000. For the reason which I have already given I also deprecate the Minister’s outlook that the pipeline will become just another taxing machine. In the words of the hon. Minister “…to recoup losses on rail transport ”. Everybody wants to see that pipe-line installed. But I have given two very good reasons why the project should not be entrusted to the Railway Administration. If ever there was a case for divorcing this project from vested interests, which the Railways have in transport, this is the case. I am not suggesting that it should be taken out of the hands of the Government. I am merely suggesting that it should be put into the hands of a department such as the Department of Commerce and Industry so that the competitive aspect can be given adequate consideration and that the whole project should not be destroyed by this warning or threat which the Minister announced when he said that “the pipe-line was going to be used to recoup losses on rail transport". I think that is a tragedy. We on this side of the House have always given credit where credit is due. I want to say that the recent improvement in the publication of monthly revenue and expenditure figures has not gone unnoticed on this side of the House. These figures for the first time in many years now serve some public purpose. I think they should be given better pride of place in the index of the Gazette. In fact to-day they stand right at the bottom of a long series of indices because the Gazette index is on a departmental basis. I think the Minister can take sufficient pride in having achieved this regular publication by having the information indexed under his department, instead of at the bottom of the page. Time will not permit me to go into other defects of the Budget but I do realize that the amounts set aside in Reserve Accounts are also in better shape to-day. The spectre which dates back to 1958-9 when R 10,000,000 was taken from Loan Funds and put into the Betterment Fund will come to an end when adjustments are made at the end of the year and the last R2,000,000 is adjusted as the hon. Minister has proposed out of the current surplus. I am certainly glad to see better financial propriety in respect of this and other reserves. It is satisfactory to know that criticisms from this side of the House have led to essential reforms of that kind. But more reforms, of course, are needed. The main purpose of the amendment moved by the hon. member for Wynberg is to make that quite clear and to indicate without any doubt that further reforms are necessary and should be made.

The hon. member who has just sat down has juggled with figures to such an extent that I will leave him to the hon. the Minister. It is a strange thing to my mind that the hon. member has suggested that the Railways should not proceed with their pipeline and that this pipeline should be erected by another company. In other words, the Railways are now expected to relinquish the high-tariff goods …

He did not say that.

… and to be satisfied with the low-tariff goods. The hon. member has juggled with figures to such an extent that the United Party themselves do not know where they stand. I shall therefore leave the hon. member to the hon. Minister.

I want to congratulate the hon. Minister on the fact that the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) has so much confidence in him. The hon. the Minister will remember that a year or two ago the hon. member for Wynberg said that he was one of the weakest Ministers that the Railways had ever had; that he was a second-class Minister and that he was making a mess of the Railways. The hon. member for Wynberg told us to-day that he was convinced of the fact that the hon. the Minister would have another large surplus next year. He said that the hon. the Minister should not try to bluff the House that he would have a very small surplus. This indicates the confidence that the hon. the Minister instils in him and that he also believes him to be a capable Minister [Interjections.] The hon. member who has just sat down has suggested that the hon. the Minister should get information from the British Government, from British Railways on how to handle the Railways in the Republic. I think that that is going rather far. I would put it just the other way around and say that the British Government can learn from this Government and from this Minister as far as the management of their railways is concerned.

He has learned already.

Order! The hon. member for Turffontein has made a speech and he must give the hon. member an opportunity to make his speech.

The hon. member for Simonstown (Mr. Gay) objected to the increase in tariffs. He wants to make the public believe that this increase will severely hit the lowly paid workers and pensioners. If the hon. member had been able to mention one aspect to us in regard to which people will be so hard hit, one could have given some attention to what he was saying. The increase is to small that it is not worth mentioning. The hon. member can be of assistance, however, by meeting representations to the Chambers of Commerce to ensure that traders do not abuse this 10 per cent increase. In the case of certain goods they are abusing this increase. They have again increased the price of certain goods and this fact may perhaps detrimentally affect the public. I want to ask the hon. member for Simonstown to bring this to the attention of the Chambers of Commerce. I can give him the assurance that I have not heard of one single person who has objected to this increase. We do of course agree that the United Party has a very difficult task. They are the people who try to criticize and they have to try to point out certain shortcomings, but it is difficult to find those shortcomings because the hon. the Minister has stated quite emphatically why he has had to increase tariffs.

The hon. member for Turffontein (Mr. Durrant) also complained about the increase in tariffs. But he did not prove to us at all how this increase is going to have an adverse effect. However, I do not propose to take this matter any further because in his Budget speech the hon. the Minister stated quite clearly that hon. members were aware of the decision taken by the Minister to increase tariffs with effect from 1 September. The Minister said—

The hon. the Minister went on to show that improvements to the extent of about R21,000,000 had to be effected and that this had necessitated the increase. The hon. the Minister had to take this step. But is there any objection to the fact that the worker has been benefited or is it still the old policy of the United Party not to care at all what becomes of the worker? I think that this has been very clear from the speeches of hon. members opposite this afternoon. It is abundantly clear who the friends of the workers are.

What about the railway workers in the Transkei?

If that is not the case, why do the railway workers vote for this Government to-day? They stand firmly behind this Government. They do so because they know who the people are who assist them. They know on which side their bread is buttered. Let us take the case of the pensioners. Let us see to what extent they have benefited. Has the United Party ever considered the retired worker? Whereas formerly a married person drew R24.50, he now draws R30. An unmarried person’s allowance has now been increased from R18.17 to R30. It is pleasing to note that the hon. the Minister has given us the assurance that he will go so far as to increase it to R50. This is gratifying because they are really the people who need it. These are the people who have a very low income and we are very pleased about this increase. The estimated expenditure in this regard is about R1, 380,000. I want to ask the United Party: Do they have any objection to this?

We have been asking for it for a long time.

They have been asking for it but now they are trying to find fault with the fact that this increase has been granted.

If I suggest a further 5 per cent, will the hon. member support me?

Order! I cannot permit the hon. member for Turffontein to make so many interjections.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am continually being interrupted by the hon. member and I find it impossible to make my speech.

I want to discuss one section of railway workers in particular and that section is the gangers. Last year and the year before last I pleaded the cause of the ganger with the hon. the Minister. My standpoint was that they were the people doing the most dangerous and certainly one of the most responsible jobs in the Railway Service. They have to work under all sorts of conditions. It is gratifying that the hon. the Minister has given them such a reasonable increase in wages. The new wages scales, after rationalization, makes provision for a ganger to receive R100 per month. This is his commencing salary as against his former starting salary of R89.96. The wages of Grade I gangers are as follows: Previously these workers received R89.96 and this amount has now been increased to R120.90. The new wage scale is R110 with increments of R5 up to R135.

When business was suspended I was comparing the wages of gangers before and after rationalization and I was showing how much better off they are to-day. I pointed out that the old wage scale of the ganger was R89.96 and after rationalization, R120.90. The new wage scale is R104 with increments of R5 up to R135. The wage of a ganger (Grade 1) is equal now to that of a ticket examiner (Grade II). Leading gangers and ticket inspectors (special class) have now been put on the same scale. Their wages prior to and after rationalization are as follows: Leading ganger, R126 to R 139.90; the new scale is R135 rising by R5 to R155. This is excellent and I think that the hon. the Minister and his Administration deserve praise in this regard. These people are doing very dangerous and most responsible work; they have to work under all sorts of climatic conditions and I am very pleased that the hon. the Minister has seen his way clear to increase their wages. But that is not all. During the period of office of the United Party, these people had corrugated iron shacks of about 8 feet by 8 feet in which they ate, bathed and dressed. But now they have decent change-rooms and cafeterias. If one thinks of the facilities which they have to-day, one can understand why these people are feeling happy and one feels that they ought to be happy in their work. They are even given sports grounds as close as possible to their places of work where they can relax. This was previously unknown. Hon. members of the Opposition have one theme only and that is to criticize, but I do not feel like going back into history and pointing out how they treated the workers during their period of office. They have the least right to attack this Minister and the Government in regard to what is being done for the worker. There is no comparison between the way in which these people are being treated to-day and the position during the period of office of the United Party. When one listens to the hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell), the shadow Minister of Transport of the Opposition, one is given the impression that he will move heaven and earth for the worker, but fortunately, the worker is quite aware of the fact that his salvation does not lie with the United Party and the sooner the United Party realizes that the Railway workers are permanently behind this Government, the better it will be for that Party.

I also want to congratulate the hon. the Minister and the Administration on the system which was introduced a few years ago to enable potential Railway workers to receive training. This was an excellent scheme and we are already seeing the results of this scheme. We already find that there are fewer claims for compensation because to-day these people are trained. Even the non-Whites are being trained. When we think how goods and furniture were handled in the past and we see how it is being done to-day, now that these people have had a little training, we have cause to be satisfied and we can expect far fewer claims to be made in the future in respect of damage caused in the handling of goods. In his Budget speech the hon. the Minister also pointed out that improvements which have been effected in the wages of the staff over the past two years, the cost of living allowances and the non-pensionable allowances, have resulted in considerable expenditure. Together with consolidation these improvements amounted to R15,000,000. The costs connected with the rationalization of salaries and wages bring the total to R36,000,000 per annum. It would seem that this has no effect on the Opposition. They have only one idea and that is “increased tariffs ”.Sir, let us imagine that the hon. the Minister had not increased tariffs. I think the United Party would have allowed this entire Budget to go through without criticizing it at all because they have had nothing to say except to discuss the increased tariffs. We all know from experience—and the hon. the Minister also mentioned this fact—that contented officials render the best service, and the hon. the Minister has also told us that there has been greater efficiency amongst the Railway staff as a whole and that a reduced staff has managed to cope with the increased traffic. This is very clear and I think that the United Party ought also to be appreciative in this regard and to admit that these workers are far better off to-day.

I do not want to criticize but I want to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to the fact that there are still certain groups in the Railway Service who in my opinion are very poorly paid. I refer to the labourers. I know that it will be difficult to increase their wages, but a labourer to-day earns only from R60 to a maximum of R80 per month. We all know what the cost of living is to-day and that it is very difficult to keep a home going on a salary of that size. Then there is another point that I want to bring to the attention of the hon. the Minister and that is the fact that the widow of the Railway worker has to become the breadwinner after the death of her husband. There are many cases where these women still have children whom they have to look after and whom they have to educate. Such a widow is regarded as being unmarried. I want to ask whether that gap cannot be narrowed down so that those women who have children to be educated will still be regarded as married women. I want to ask the hon. the Minister to give his serious attention to this matter. Then there is another group which should also be given some assistance as soon as funds are available. I refer to the stewards. When we see the good services that we receive, the courtesy that we receive here in the parliamentary refreshment rooms and we think of the remuneration paid to these people, then we really feel that these people should also be taken care of. It is also gratifying that after years of struggling to make ourselves self-supporting in this country, we have now come so far that we are building our own units here, our own coaches, trucks and so forth. The hon. the Minister has told us that 112 new items of rolling stock and 21 dining cars will shortly be put into service. I do not know whether hon. members make use of the train services but I do most of the time and recently I travelled in a train with a dining car which was air-conditioned and had a lounge car attached to it, and if this in itself does not encourage the public to make more use of trains, then I do not know, because it is really very pleasant to travel in these trains. And besides this, we have the courtesy of the staff which immediately attracts attention. They are always at one’s service and one feels happy and at home on a train. We should advertise these facilities to a greater extent so that more use will be made of the trains over long distances. The hon. the Minister has told us that a further 100 electric locomotives have been ordered. Hon. members on the other side criticized the hon. the Minister. If they had been in power to-day would hon. members opposite ever have considered the idea of having those items of rolling stock built in the Republic? No, the orders would have been placed somewhere overseas with the result that some of our people would have been out of work. to-day, however, there are reasonable opportunities of employment with private companies manufacturing these items of rolling stock.

I also want to congratulate the General Manager and his staff and thank them as the hon. the Minister did. The hon. the Minister has told us that as soon as the new coaches are put into service, fixed units will be made up for certain specific trains on certain routes. That is an excellent idea and we can now look forward to using some of the new coaches on the Cape Town route, for example.

In spite of all the setbacks and difficulties which the hon. the Minister has had in achieving what he has achieved, he has been wonderfully successful. If we compare the revenue for 1961-2 with that for 1948-9, the result is amazing. In 1948-9 the revenue was R165,274, 970 and in 1961-2 it amounted to R443,963,000.

I come now to another very important point and this deals with level crossings. I want to ask the hon. the Minister—I speak subject to correction—whether the Administration has already tried out the system of half-gates on main roads, a system which is used overseas? I am not aware whether this system has already been tried out or not, but if not, I want to ask whether it cannot be tried out immediately.

Read the Report of the General Manager.

We still have about 600 level crossings and I want to ask whether the system of half-gates cannot be tested. You would then have rattle-boxes with revolving pipes and a series of concrete ridges before you reach the rattle-box. Any driver, no matter how tired he may be, even if he is half asleep, will then be awakened as soon as he reaches those ridges, and then he will still have to cross the rattle-box which is a few hundred yards from the line. Such a box only costs R128. At the present tempo at which level crossings are being eliminated it will still take from about 20 to 24 years to eliminate all level crossings. Cannot we try out that system in the meantime? If we take the accidents which occurred during 1957-8 up to and including 1961-2, we find that in 1961-2 only 7 per cent of accidents were eliminated in comparison with the figure for 1957-8. In 1957-8,71 people were killed and 146 people were injured in 363 accidents. In 1961-2,79 people were killed and 106 injured in 350 accidents. This shows that the decrease is not appreciable. I shall be pleased if in his reply the hon. the Minister will tell us whether these half-gates are acceptable. Rhodesia tried them out, but I do not know what the result of the experiment was. In France, for example, there are 1,400 of these half-gates and rattle-traps on the roads, and the report shows that they are a complete success. Because it will take so long before we can eleminate these level crossings, I think that it is extremely important for the hon. the Minister to try out this scheme.

In conclusion I want to draw the attention of the hon. the Minister to the accidents which take place on our roads because of the fact that large goods lorries, and even cars, are parked at the side of the road during the night without reflectors or lights of any kind.

Order! That is not relevant now.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I know …

If the hon. member knows it, why does he raise the matter?

I am very sorry that I cannot join the hon. member in his congratulations to the hon. Minister. I would have thought that he would have realized already at this stage of the debate, that we have proved our case against the Minister, and it is cast-iron. I must say, however, that I personally don’t know what “rationalization” means. I looked it up in various dictionaries, and so have others, but one thing it certainly does not mean is an increase in wages. However, the increase in wages was something which we were very glad to accept because it was as a result of our insistence last year that these increases were granted to the men.

Order! Several hon. members have made that point already.

Yes, Mr. Speaker, I was talking to the hon. member for Langlaagte, but I do say that these increases could have been given, and we have proved it in the discussion, without this blanket increase in rates which is having and will continue to have a devastating effect on the economy of the country.

I want to speak on the effect of the Railway policy of the Minister on the gold-mining industry. The Railways, as has been said before, are supposed to be run on a business basis, with due regard to the economic and agricultural interests of South Africa. Now, the Railways may pay for themselves, but they are certainly not run with due regard to the economic affairs of the country. I cannot imagine a better job to have than the job that this Minister has got, to be in a position to say: Oh well, let us spend the money and we just put up rates to meet the extra expenditure. It must be a particularly happy position to be in to be able to say: Who is going to listen to these economists? What do they know about the country and its future? We are running the Railways and have got to make them pay. We will spend as much as we like and we will take as much as we like to pay for what we spend.

What do you know about those things?

If there is one man in this House that I think could possibly make a bigger mess of this job than is being done at present, it is the hon. member who is interrupting. It must be lovely to tell the economists: Who are you that you can tell me whether I should put up the rates or not? But nobody ever suggested to the hon. Minister that he should ask other people whether he could put up rates. All that was suggested was that if rates were going to be put up, he should consult with and listen to and pay regard to the views of the people who have been appointed by the Prime Minister to guide the complex economic affairs of our country along reasonable roads. But the hon. the Minister chose to say in Pretoria, that he was not prepared to allow the Economic Advisory Council to tell him whether he could put up the rates or not. His interests are the Railways and to hell with the country. I am sorry, I mean, you know where the country could go to.

I want to come back to the position of the gold mines. It cannot be gainsaid that the back bone of the economy of this country is the gold-mining industry, and any step which increases the costs of the gold-mining industry, particularly the costs of the low-grade mines, does damage to the general economy of the country, and that is what the Minister has done, either deliberately or wantonly—I don’t know which is the worse.

Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: You can’t prove that.

I will prove it in phrases and words that even the hon. member can understand. I am terribly serious about this. The gold mines must be about the Minister’s biggest customers and their continued existence is of as great importance as the continued existence of the agricultural industry in this country. Now I want to ask the hon. Minister: Why does he try to put them out of business? Would he in his own business try and put his best customers out of business? I doubt it. I want to repeat that I am very pleased that the Minister increased the wages of the railwaymen, but, as this Budget shows, the blanket increase in rates was unnecessary, ill-timed and could have waited for proper investigation, which did not take place! the Minister could have waited long enough to realize after proper investigation and discussions with the despised economists that it was not wise—I am going to use stronger words later—to increase mining costs, thereby jeopardizing the jobs of thousands of White men and tens of thousands of non-Whites. Mr. Speaker, in 1956, there was a round-table conference between the Department of Mines, the mining industry, the unions and everybody interested in the economic future of South Africa. It was held mainly to consider the question of the low-grade mines and their continued existence. It suggested among other things—and this is one of the best reports ever issued, and that I suppose is why it was disregarded by the Minister and his Department—it suggested that low-grade mines should be classified as such. And the Department of Mines, Mr. Speaker, is so efficient that it can tell us more about the mines than the mining industry itself. Mr. Speaker, this conference’s report suggested that the Government should investigate the possibility of relief in respect of a classified mine from part or whole of the rail transport charges on bulk commodities such as coal, lime and timber. This report suggested—

Just after this report was issued, there was a further increase of 1.9d. per ton in railway charges to the low-grade mines, a very similar occurrence to what has just happened in this recent 10 per cent increase, with a complete disregard of the economic interests of the country as a whole.

Mr. Speaker, there were five mines specially mentioned in the round-table report, and they showed an average profit of Is. 2.2d. per ton (the report was in the old currency). These five mines produced almost £13,000,000 worth of gold, five of the hon. Minister’s customers. They employed at that time 4,089 Europeans and 30,000 Natives, something worth while. In 1958 I advised the then Minister of Mines that this 1.9d. per ton increase in rail charges would result in an increase in revenue to the Railways of £64,000 per annum, and that the calculated profits of these five mines amounted to only £480,000. This increase in rail charges was a very big cut in the profits of these mines, and not even this Minister can expect his customers to go on indefinitely running at a loss to keep his Railways going. Remember that they produced £13,000,000 worth of gold and employed more than 4,000 Europeans and 30,000 non-Europeans. I repeat: Is this the way to treat some of your best customers? The amounts received by the Railways from these five mines in revenue were at least four times greater than the £64,000 extra received as a result of the increase by 1.9d. per ton milled. So, if they put them out of business, the Railways will lose £300,000 a year. Sir, this is not the way to treat your best customers, apart from the fact that your best customers are so important to the general economy of the country. Of course I appreciate that the Minister’s outlook is that the general economy of the country has nothing whatever to do with him.

Mr. Speaker, the report of this round-table conference was produced in 1956. At that time the mines regarded as marginal produced gold to the value of R37,000,000. So the ridiculous policy of this Minister and his Department is jeopardizing nearly three times the production of the five mines I have mentioned. You see, it is an impossible and an intolerable position. The Government knows about this. There is no co-ordination. Juggernaut rides on his two rails and sees nothing else, and should anything get in his way, it is pushed aside, as the advice of the Economic Advisory Council was pushed aside. Sir, economics have a nasty way of coming home to roose like birds do occasionally. Last year, in the Other Place, the Minister of Mines said that there were then 18 of the larger mines which were regarded as marginal profit mines by his Department, and that, in 1961, these mines were still responsible for 11 per cent of our total gold production, well over R60,000,000 a year, and they employed over 10,000 Europeans, and nearly 80,000 non-Europeans. And railway charges, Mr. Speaker, form a tremendous portion of their costs.

I want to develop my objections to this Minister’s policy in regard to the difficulties of the low-grade mines in more detail. I have here official figures for two low-grade mines on the Reef, each of which has a very large tonnage of low-grade ore, which may or may not be workable, subject to what the hon. the Minister of Railways decides. In one case the railage charges in total paid by the mines increased from R97,800 per year, for 1958, to R108,533 in 1961. That is an increase of over R 10,000 per annum for this mine. [Interjection.] There was this increase in railage costs to this particular mine, notwithstanding the fact that the tonnage milled by this mine dropped from 1,035,000 to 854,000 tons during the period I mentioned, from 1958 to 1962, during which period, thanks to the policy of this Minister, the costs of railage per ton milled increased from 9.4c to 12.47c, due to the policy of this Minister, a 33⅓ per cent increase. In the second case the railage costs have been broken down in further detail, and the railage costs for coal to this mine increased from R33,860 in 1958 to R41,235 in 1962, an increase of R7,378, and the railage cost on lime increased from R13,080 in 1958 to R15,426 in 1962, an increase of R2,350. [Interjections.] I know it is very convenient for hon. members opposite to disregard figures, so I will endeavour to simplify them to a degree where even they will be able to follow them. The railage costs on the two bulk items only—coal and lime—caused this mine an increased cost of R9,720 between 1958 and 1962, and remember that the round-table conference recommended particularly, as I mentioned earlier, that coal, lime and timber were bulk items on which the railage charges should be watched closely, and the mines should be helped through these charges, but there is not a mine in regard to which this Minister, who is supposed to be the greatest Minister of Railways of all time, has given any help. I want to point out to the Minister that these two mines paid out in 1962 in Railway railage charges the best part of R200,000, which is a lot of money from two customers only, and the Minister has increased the expenses by his recent dictum—it is nothing else; he simply said they had to pay 10 per cent more—by R20,560 per annum. Sir, very little more is required to put them completely out of business, and then the Minister will lose R200,000 per annum from these two mines. He will not get the R20,000 that he is gouging out of them, but he will lose R200,000. Please remember that between these five particular mines they made only R480,000 profit, but they produced R 13,000,000 worth of gold, and the Minister has chosen to take unto himself as much as possible without giving any consideration whatever to the men working on those mines or to the general economy of the country.

Mr. Speaker, I want you to remember one other thing. I mentioned that the Minister of Mines had said in the Other Place last year that there were 18 of these mines, and I have given figures relating to only two of them. Does the Minister want to kill all 18 and lose R2,000,000 in railage rates just because he wants another R40,000 or R50,000 without thought and without reason? For the Minister’s information as to the further effects of this disastrous administration of his, I want to quote from a letter received by me from a mine manager friend of mine. I am afraid the Minister at some stage of his career will have to start thinking about the general economy of the country, and not only of the Railways. This letter says—

They make R2.000 profit out of an expenditure of R200,000 per month. That is 1 per cent profit, and the Minister regards such an industry as fair game, an industry which is at the moment the backbone of the whole of our economic set-up, our foreign currency and our external exchange position. Truly, this is tragic, and I hope it does not last too long. But somehow I do not think it will. I want to ask the Minister whether he is doing his best to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, or is his attitude just the normal Railway attitude: Kill them off and then hold an inquiry into the cause of death? I cannot really understand the Minister. He refuses to run some line unless his revenue is guaranteed, such as the lines running to the Native townships, and this guarantee amounts to a subsidy to commerce and industry, because the country is giving cheap money for this Native housing. They cannot live so far out of the towns without transport. The transport is arranged by the Railways, which in turn refuses to run it at a loss, and quite rightly, and so the loss is made up from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. I say that that amounts to assistance to industry. I do not object to that, but what I do object to is that this sort of thing should be done and yet mines are forced to go under through extra Railway charges. It is just not understandable. I have run businesses for a long time, and I have never known that you could run a business successfully by deliberately endeavouring to put your best customers out of business, and making up the business you lose through that by demanding subsidies against losses on other services you run. Perhaps even at this late stage a discussion by the Minister with the Economic Advisory Council could put him on the right lines, but I must say I doubt it. His vision is limited by the tracks he controls—narrow and inflexible. It must be lovely to be inflexible, but how he gets people to depend on him I do not know. Something will have to be done about this particular bull in the economic china shop. His cavorting must be stopped before he causes irretrievable harm to the mining industry and to the country. [Interjection.] These 18 mines which are in jeopardy produce over R60,000,000 worth of gold, give employment to thousands of Whites and tens of thousands of Blacks. The country’s all-important foreign exchange depends wholly upon these mines and the rest of the industry combined, and why does the Minister want to kill them off? I hope he will tell us. I support the amendment.

*Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: Mr. Speaker, the Opposition have seldom paid the hon. the Minister such a compliment as in this debate. You will recall that over a number of years the Opposition persistently came here with the story that the Minister is not able to administer the finances of the Railways properly. That was the refrain throughout every debate, whether a surplus was announced or whether there was a deficit: The Minister was making a mess of Railway finance, and the finances of the Railways were on such an unstable basis that the poor railway staff had no hope that effect could ever be given to their legitimate demands. That was the one side of the picture the Opposition painted, and which they wanted the House and the public to believe, but since consolidation of wages and cost-of-living allowances the Minister has now benefited the railway staff by an amount of no less than R36,000,000, and what does the Opposition say now? They say it was not necessary for the Minister to have increased tariffs in order to meet this extra expenditure. They argue that the Railway finances are so strong and stable that the Minister can afford to vote R36,000,000 extra over a short period without increasing tariffs. In the days of the United Party tariffs were also increased, usually to wipe out deficits. We on this side of the House are grateful that the Minister has not increased tariffs to wipe out deficits, but that he has done so with a view to increasing the salaries of the railway staff, for which all of us are very thankful. But I think enough has been said here about the Railways. The entire debate so far has been concerned with only this one section of the transport services, and that is why I am not apologizing for saying a word or two on the S.A. Airways.

During recent years various undertakings have been tackled in South Africa in various spheres, and great success has been achieved, but one wonders whether it is always sufficiently realized what phenomenal success the S.A. Railways has achieved with the development of the S.A. Airways. The achievements of S.A. Airways services, particularly on its overseas routes, which have been in operation since 1945 only, are the very best in the world and that service is literally a good advertisement for the Republic of South Africa overseas wherever it operates, every day. So that in a discussion such as this, which deals with the operating results of Railways, Harbours and Air Services, we cannot but emphasize the important position the S.A. Airways occupies in the transport pattern. In the course of my speech I should like to make a few suggestions, and possibly some of them may be less acceptable, but I shall do so for what it is worth.

In the first place I should like to suggest that protection be given to our overseas services against private unscheduled airlines; in the second place I should like to advocate the establishment of scheduled air freight flights on our internal and external services, and possibly the purchase of smaller types of freight planes. Thirdly I should like to advocate direct liaison with the industrialists and the producers, with a view to the promotion of air freight transport. Fourthly, I should like to advocate intensification of advertisement and publicity inter alia by a campaign of “Travel South African”, travel films etc., and fifthly, I should also like to ask that negotiations should take place with the Provincial and local authorities with a view to the elimination of bottlenecks between airports and urban terminals.

If the success of the S.A. Airways were to be measured according to the trading profit of something over R1,000,000 during the past financial year, and an anticipated R500,000 during the current financial year, it can easily paint too modest a picture. The proper perspective can only be obtained if a few factors in regard to the service are inquired into. The first is, when regard is had to the extent of the Airways’ activities. Now it is necessary to mention some statistics in this regard, and I hope you will bear with me.

During the financial year 1961-2 49,424 passengers were carried on the Springbok route, representing an increase of 52.71 per cent over that of the previous year. During the same period 75.87 per cent more freight ton miles and 19 percent more mail ton miles were recorded. No less than 12,032, 941 freight ton miles were carried by the joint services, which is 4,693, 114 ton miles more than in the previous year. According to the Budget speech, during the first eight months of the current financial year in comparison with the corresponding period of the previous year, there was an increase of 12.5 per cent in passengers, 37 per cent in mail ton miles and 16.8 per cent in freight ton miles for all the services together the total number of charter flights increased from 54 to 118, that accounted for a record of R3 59,526 being collected. During December 1962 alone, no less than 30 additional flights between Johannesburg and the coastal cities were undertaken, carrying an extra 1,500 passengers. These and other statistics are significant proof to us of the increasing demand and popularity of the S.A. Airways.

The achievements of the services have furthermore to be seen in the light of the extremely keen competition it has to cope with. The S.A. Airways at the present time provide six services every week in every direction between Jan Smuts, Europe and London. The Springbok pool partners, namely B.O.A.C., Central African Airways and East African Airways in turn each provide an equal number of services. But in addition to these 12 services, there are eight more international lines which together undertake 14 services per week from and to Johannesburg. That means that nearly 2,000 passengers can now be carried from South Africa to Europe every week. Because the S.A. Airways is unsurpassable as regards service, comfort and safety and efficiency, it is capable of holding its own as regards the attracting of passengers, as well of drawing a large percentage of the available passengers. However, there still is the competition with private lines, which makes the competition so much more keener. In regard to the private lines I should like to quote what the General Manager had to say in “Volkshandel”—

[Interjections.] If the hon. member has nothing else to do, he might as well take a trip to Cuba. We have accepted the principle in South Africa that our national transport services should be protected against private competition, and that is why the S.A. Railways and the road motor services are protected against private road carriers. We have also accepted that principle regarding the internal air routes. Private lines are prevented from interfering with our service. Therefore I should like to suggest that the Administration should cause a thorough inquiry to be made into what can be done to protect the S.A. Airways on its international air routes against the activities of the private airlines at Jan Smuts Airport.

How keen the competition is and how well our Airways is doing in the circumstances, appears from the fact that our Airways operated at a small profit during the past few years, while the 93 airlines of the International Air Transport Association in 1961 had a collective working deficit of R94,000,000. I understand that last year there was a small collective profit of only 1 per cent. Some lines suffered heavy losses, such as inter alia Sabena, whose loss for the year amounted to R5,600,000. The working profits of other old established companies such as the K.L.M. during the past year were very small, in comparison with the S.A. Airways. K.L.M. e.g. had an increase of 5 per cent in respect of its passenger transport, 4 per cent in respect of its freight ton miles and 3 per cent in respect of its mail ton miles. The fact that airlines have experienced difficulty during recent years in balancing their accounts, is not attributable to the fact that air traffic has decreased. On the contrary, in 1961 no less than 111,000,000 passengers were carried, which represented an increase of 8.8 per cent on the previous year. The reason why the airlines are now having a difficult time is the fact that there has been a large-scale switch-over from propellor-driven aircraft to jet aircraft, and as a result carrying capacity has been considerably increased and competition has become considerably keener. In 1961, e.g., no fewer than 220 jet aircraft were purchased by the various airlines, and that pushed up the carrying capacity for air passengers by 16.1 per cent. The transition period in regard to the introduction of jet aircraft is not a thing of the past either, and for that reason it will still have an influence on the air transport of the various lines this year and in the immediate future. The S.A. Airways was very fortunate in not suffering losses on the introduction of jet aircraft on its overseas routes, as did the other lines. On the contrary, the Boeing service brought about a tremendous spurt in the activities of the S.A. Airways. As a result of the speed, air journeys to Europe that formerly took about 21 hours are now completed in a little more than 12 hours. The Boeing service was two years old on 1 October 1962. and during these two years 74.3 per cent more passengers were carried in half the flying time and in 250,000 fewer miles, in comparison with the two years immediately before the jet service was introduced. During the same period the freight ton miles also increased by not less than 175.43 per cent.

So in respect of the carriage of freight also the Boeing Service brought about a radical change in our service. Ten years ago our services collectively carried only about 1,000,000 freight ton miles. Now it is more than 12,000,000. Mail ton miles also increased during the same period by 78 per cent. To better illustrate the wide diversity of goods that are carried by air, I should like to read two extracts, one from a report that appeared in the Press on 5 April 1962 under the heading “South African Products are Raining from the Skies on Britain ”—

Now, as a matter of interest, I should like to quote from Spoorwegnuus of September 1962—

Mr. Speaker, we could include the hon. member among these articles if he wishes. I do not know which of these animals the hon. member for Wynberg now is trying to emulate …

He is a night adder.

*Mr. S. F. KOTZÉ: It continues—

Reading this about button spiders and poisonous things reminds one of the hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Ross) who has just spoken. Air freight and mail transport during the year 1961-2 accounted for no less than one-fifth of the revenue of the South African Airways. It was a total amount of R5,500,000. The increasing volume of air freight that is being carried is progressively becoming a factor in the export trade of the Republic. So, e.g., the Republic’s air trade with Britain during the first half of last year increased by R600,000 as against the corresponding period the previous year. I read from the publication British Transport as follows—

As a result of the constantly increasing importance of air transport and the intense competition prevailing amongst the airlines, numbers of the world airlines are concentrating more and more upon the carriage of air freight. The South African Airways should not be left behind in this respect either. Steps are already being taken on behalf of the International Air Transport Association which will make it possible for its member lines to derive the maximum benefit from the carriage of air freight and to utilize it fully. So for instance in October last year world-wide agreements were entered into in regard to the fixing of international air freight tariffs. Our own service, too, has launched an extensive publicity campaign by means of advertising and in other ways to sell its air freight services to the producers and industrialists. However, I should like to suggest that direct co-operation should be sought from producers and industrialists who use air transport or who are potential air transport users. It should be explained to industrialists and producers what benefits are to be divided from air transport, the advantages to be gained in exchange for the high tariffs they have to pay. and there are many of these benefits, such as simpler packing, low insurance premiums, better preservation of perishable products, higher selling price obtained by earlier marketing, greater control of loss and theft, shorter periods in tying down of capital and savings on interest. A number of these advantages could be pointed out, which is being done to-day by means of this publicity campaign in the Press and otherwise, as the hon. member for Point has interjected here without being asked to do so. but I say there should be greater concentration upon it, and it should not be done only through the Press. There should be direct liaison with the industrialists and the producers, and that is what cannot penetrate the thick head of that hon. member. The co-operation of the industrialists and producers should be sought also in regard to standard packing, uniform packing, with suitable packing for the air services, and their co-operation should also be sought in facilitating consignments and the ironing out of problems that will arise from time to time. The speedy carriage of parcels and other articles of trade is becoming more and more important in view of our competitive trade. The increase in express goods traffic in the Railways is clear proof of this tendency. That is why I should like to ask whether the time has not arrived for us to give serious thought, in addition to the attention which is presently being given to the scheduling of additional parcels trains, to the introduction of scheduled air freight flights on our internal routes and on our Springbok route. Smaller aircraft are being built these days, such as, e.g., the “Short Skyvan” type with a four-ton payload. They can conveniently be used particularly on our internal routes for the carriage of air freight.

The future possibilities of air transport, internally as well as externally, make us feel optimistic. The marketing research officer of the Boeing company has estimated that—

That agrees substantially with what the director-general of the International Air Transport Association predicts for the coming year—

It is interesting to know that the British experts estimated that so far only 19 per cent of the world’s air passengers is found on routes of 1,000 miles and more, while not less than 66 per cent appears on flights of 750 miles and less. The South African Airways of course operates in an area extending over many thousands of miles on its overseas routes—a terrain that has thus far, according to these estimates, produced only 19 per cent of the world’s air passengers. On the other hand, I note that the Boeing research workers have predicted the following with a view to the future—

That. Mr. Speaker, of course, augurs well for the future of the South African Airways on its overseas routes. But these high expectations are not being cherished only in respect of international routes, but are factual proof also on which large-scale development of our internal services can be justified As regards our internal services, our sky coach services have played an important role in making the South African public air-minded. Last year the sky coach service carried no fewer than 70,000 passengers, namely 26.2 per cent more than the previous year. Although the Minister has stated in his Budget speech that the sky coach service was one of those branches of the service that produced an unsatisfactory trading result, it should nevertheless be regarded as one of the most successful advertising projects of the service. The losses there incurred can be regarded as bread cast upon the waters. That is why I agree with a columnist of one of our periodicals when he expressed himself upon our service as follows—

It seems to me that in South Africa with its great expanses, long distance train journeys will be ousted by air journeys in the years to come. In recent years the number of main line train passengers in South Africa, as in the rest of the world, has been decreasing year by year. And the Railways Administration is to-day throwing everything it has into the ring to combat this declining trend. However, I do not expect any lasting effects from that. In saying that I do not for one moment wish to suggest that the expenditure incurred in this connection and the losses that are sustained in an attempt to preserve long-distance passengers for the Railways should not be incurred. However. it does seem to me that too great a percentage of our main line passengers are people who are travelling on free passes and concession tickets. We should attract the paying long-distance travellers to our service—the people to whom the time factor is the prime consideration. There is no branch of our services in which we can do that better than in the South African Airways. So while consideration is now being given to the withdrawal of the Dakota service and as our Viscount services will have to be augmented soon, it might be as well if at this stage consideration is given to the purchase of jet aircraft for our internal service. At the present time jet aircraft capable of shorter flights are being built. In this connection I could, e.g. mention the Boeing 727 and the Tridents. These two types are of the most well known in this group. They will be able to land on the shorter runways, and so will be suitable for our internal services. Of course, they would also whenever necessary be used on our overseas routes, particularly for charter flights. Execution of such orders usually takes a very long time, and that is why the matter should be considered now so that orders may be placed in good time.

Positive new undertakings in respect of our overseas as well as our internal services will also require more intensive publicity. The anticipated R500,000 whereby the publicity account of the air services will increase in the ensuing financial year is therefore quite realistic. In order to sell our air transport services, we shall have to apply the latest and most spectacular methods of advertising. Advertisements in cinemas, exhibitions at shows, travel films specially made for this purpose, advertising by means of the radio and, as the hon. member for Paarl says, tots of light wines for travellers, all this should be tried. In this regard we might have to adopt the methods adopted by the oil companies, as well as those adopted by the big industrialists. But we must see to it that the maximum publicity is obtained for the service. From time to time things happen in our air services that have good news value. Remember, e.g. the occurrence in March last year, when the first unbroken flights between Johannesburg and Athens were introduced. Remember, too, another occasion when the biggest fuel tanker, taking 12,500 gallons of fuel, was taken into service at Jan Smuts Airport. Consider another instance, when on 12 October last year the new French long-distance radar equipment, with the most powerful navigating instruments on the continent of Africa, was taken into service here at the D. F. Malan Airport.

I leave it at that. I should just like to add, that it was a bright idea to decorate our Viscounts and D.C. 7B’s inside and outside. However, I should like to ask whether we cannot go even further. Here I should like to quote, as a matter of interest, from an article in a supplement of the Burger … I cannot find the relevant passage here for the moment, so I shall just leave it at that. In any case my time is limited. I should like to recommend, however, that a campaign be launched in South Africa with the slogan “Travel South African”, in the same way that we have a slogan, “Buy South African ”. By means of such a campaign, we could bring it forcibly home to our people that they should make greater use of our South African Airways. By means of such a campaign, we shall also be able to direct people’s attention specifically to the advantages and services of the Travellers’ Bureau of the South African Railways. Many of our people who travel with State aid and even with State money, even Government officials and Ministers, forget that the South African Railways Travellers’ Bureau can render the same services as other travel agencies. Why then do they not avail themselves of the services of this Bureau? Of course, there still are minor snags that appear from time to time, and which will have to be eliminated. For instance, there still are complaints regarding reservation of seats. Unfortunately, I do not have the time now to dilate upon that. However, we know that mechanization of the system of reservation of seats has brought about a great improvement, but still there are complaints, and this matter ought to receive attention.

In conclusion I should like to point out that the long time taken in getting from the airport to the city terminal is still a constant source of annoyance. In this respect I should like to congratulate Cape Town, where the bottle-neck in this connection has been largely eliminated by means of the speedways that have been built to the airport. Cannot the Department through the Minister of Transport contact the provincial councils and city councils with a view to the elimination of bottle-necks in cities such as Johannesburg?

As I have said, there are still these and other minor shortcomings, but in spite of that the South African Airways is a service of which the public of South Africa may rightly be proud. I do hope that the few suggestions I have made here to-night will contribute towards the service being developed still further and being made even more attractive.

The hon. member who just sat down (Mr. S. F. Kotzé) slated us at the beginning of his speech for criticizing the Minister. He said that when there was a surplus, we criticized the Minister and did the same when there was a deficit. Afterwards the hon. member started reading extracts from articles to a very great extent. Much of what he read out, I remember having seen myself at some time or other. He went into the activities of the South African Airways at length and dealt with its wonderful prestige. I think the hon. the Minister ought to employ the hon. member as a liaison and advertising agent for the South African Airways.

No, no! Not that!

What he forgot to do, however, when he talked about the purchase of new planes, was to say that we should buy additional planes from Cuba!

Mr. Speaker, the debate so far has been noticeable on the Government side, like it was last year, by the lack of constructive criticism of the Minister’s Budget proposals. This is the time of the year when the Minister comes to this House and asks us to pass judgment on the work of the Railways for the year. In that, he does not get much assistance from his own side of the House. But then I do not know what happens in their caucus. Here, however, he gets nothing but praise from his own side. It was peculiar to see how every member who got up, praised the Minister and the Government for the work they have done and for the wonderful things done for the railwayman, i.e. increases in salaries, the consolidation of wages, etc. It is necessary to recall that not a single member on the other side got up last year and spoke on behalf of the railwaymen when they had their fight with the Minister over salaries. to-day, however, they claim all the credit for what the railwaymen received!

Do you want to claim that you did it?

They claim to be the friends of the railwayman. But how silent they were last year! But to-day they claim the credit for what the railwaymen received! That they cannot do! We, on this side of the House, welcome the increases in the salaries of the railwaymen. We also welcome the increases in pensions. These increases were very much overdue. We, on this side of the House, take the credit for these increases. The attitude of the Minister to the claims which the railwaymen made last year was that he was not going to be dictated to. We managed, however, to have the matter debated and to draw the attention of the public to it. Consequently, the Minister was placed in a position where he had no alternative but to meet the fair requests of the railwaymen.

Why do you not quote from Hansard?

As I said, the Minister was forced to meet them. We were reluctant to raise the working conditions of the railwayman in this House but it was our duty to do so.

The Minister should know, however, that the salary and other increases he has granted them, represent only a stage and that the time will come when he will be faced with further claims. As a result of the rising cost of living in this country, what is given this year, will be completely inadequate two years hence. I hope, therefore, that he is aware of that and that he will be prepared to meet them at the next stage.

Coming to the hon. the Minister’s budget speech, I detected right throughout that speech the guilty fear of having raised tariffs. It is quite apparent that he consulted no one in this regard apart from himself. He did not even consult the terms of reference of the commission which is sitting about rating at the present moment. Had he done so, I feel sure he would have taken them into consideration. But, as it is, he did not. I refer particularly to paragraph (2) of the terms of reference of the commission. The commission has to inquire into and report upon—

1. (2) the influence of the existing railway rates and the total costs of transport on the national economy and, in particular, on the geographical location and/or development of industries.

Then there is paragraph (3) of the terms of reference—

1. (3) the adaptation, where necessary, of the rating policy and the method of tariff determination with a view to—
   1. (a) the promotion of decentralization of industries and the development of border areas; and
   2. (b) the elimination or reduction of present uneconomic rates.

He did not consult these terms of reference, because had he done so, we would have been faced with a very different picture than that facing us to-day. I think it was, to use a term which he himself used on another occasion, hamhanded action on his part. To use the tariff increases as necessary for increasing pensions, is very unworthy of him.

We, on this side of the House, have always said that the railways should be run on business-like lines. We still say that. It should, however, not be forgotten that the railways are a nationalised concern; they are there to serve the people—and when I say “people”. I mean everybody including those connected with industry. The Government has, over the years, take cognizance of the needs of agriculture but this Government seem for some reason or other to have ignored industry. The hon. member for Benoni (Mr. Ross) has already spoken about the conditions of the marginal mines and the effect of increased tariffs in their future life. The result of the rise in tariffs on the industries of the Western Cape is equally serious. In respect of coal alone, it will cost the ratepayers in Cape Town over R200,000 more per year. It will cost Escom a similar amount. Consequently, all outlying users of Escom power have had their rates increased according to the rise in the price of coal. The cost of power has, in other words, gone up. On industry it has the effect of rising costs in the various factories. This again has a snowballing effect. We are, in the Cape, at the tail end of South Africa and a lot of the raw materials needed for manufacture here have to come from the north. On these raw materials an extra 10 per cent rate has now to be paid. When the manufactured article has to be sent north, another 10 per cent has to be paid on it. That is why I say that the increases in tariffs have a snowballing effect as far as industry in the Western Cape is concerned.

Then we in the Western Cape are facing the added disadvantage of having Bantu labour removed from this area. In addition to the snowballing effect of the increased tariffs, therefore, we have to face the possibility of a labour scarcity in the Western Province, which in turn will keep industries away from this area. Instead of assisting us here in the Cape, the Government makes it more difficult. Recently the manager of one of our largest cigarette manufacturers here in the Cape stated quite openly that it cost him more to rail cigarettes to the Rand than it cost him to produce cigarettes in his factories. The hon. member for Wynberg (Mr. Russell) already pointed out the fact that it cost more to rail an article produced in the Western Province to the Rand than to ship it to England!

Would it not be better if the cirgarette manufacturing company you spoke about, opened factories on the Rand instead of getting raw materials from the Rand and railing the finished product back again?

It will be moved to the borders of the reserves!

The hon. member for Pretoria (District) has hit the nail on the head in that he revealed the Government’s desire to move industries from the Western Cape! The Minister ought to be very careful, however, not to go too far with that policy.

The Minister’s policy should be not to increase rates, but to reduce rates. All over the world one finds that when there are empty freighters, these are, instead of being kept idle, put back in service by reducing rates. It should, be the Minister’s policy to reduce railway rates wherever possible thereby encouraging a greater volume of traffic. To increase rates is the easy way out, but volume is not increased. It should be the other way round. In the car manufacturing industry, for instance, you will find that the aim is volume so as to be able to sell cars at the lowest possible prices. That is a policy which the Minister should follow, i.e. to increase volume and reduce rates.

The Minister also referred in his budget speech to increasing the carrying capacity of the railway lines. Let me, in this respect, come back to the Western Cape. We are here, as I already said, on the most southern tip….

But South Africa does not consist only of the Western Cape?

Well, I am interested in the Western Cape. It is the most important part of South Africa. It is necessary to have the cheapest form of rail traffic so that we will be able to compete when sending our goods to the large markets in the north. Therefore I should like to know from the hon. the Minister whether he has given further consideration to finishing the Hex River tunnels and shortening the line. I know he has straightened lines in other parts of the country and spent millions on it. But what is happening at Hex River where a lot of capital is tied up in a half finished scheme. I am sure that he can increase the carrying capacity of this line, decrease tariffs as a result and assisting industries down here, by completing these tunnels. It is imperative that we have something better than what we have at the present time. Admittedly we have an electrified service at present as far as Beaufort West which will probably be taken further afield, but we are still operating on a single line. This is very very costly, and slow-moving. I appeal to the Minister to give further consideration to increasing the carrying capacity of this line by straightening out the line through the Hex River.

In his reference to goods traffic, provision is made in his budget for special type trucks. It is noticeable that with the surplus of maize which must be exported, through our grain elevators, we have ships lying idle waiting for maize to arrive at the ports. I understand this is due to the shortage of suitable trucks for the conveyance of maize. If that is the case, I think the Minister should do something about it. He has told us in his budget speech that the maize surplus was likely to last for quite a while, and he was expecting substantial increases in shipments overseas, so much so that he is building a new grain elevator in East London. He should at the same time give consideration to the building of the necessary trucks to carry the maize to the ports.

As far as suburban passenger traffic is concerned, I wonder whether the Minister and the Administration are going all out to increase passenger traffic. One notices a big difference in the public relations of the Airways and that of the Railways. Especially on the suburban side of passenger traffic, public relations fall down lamentably. Take the Cape Town suburban lines for instance. As far as I know there are no plans to increase the carrying capacity of these lines by adding a third line and or providing vehicle parking at the stations. I know the Minister will say that that is not his job but somebody else’s. Others again say it is not theirs but that of the Minister's. If the Minister, however, wants to encourage people to use his train services, he should create facilities for them including the provision of parking. That does not apply to stations in the Cape but to stations all over the Republic. He must offer attractions to the rail user if he wants them to use his rail transport. Take long distance trains for instance. In this respect I wonder whether the Minister, in order to attract more passengers, should not employ a new approach. We have all lately seen what I call the Max Wilson’s approach to travel. We still have first and second class travel on our trains. This is outdated. The Minister should give consideration to doing away with this. The traveller should be allowed to buy the accommodation he requires. We have done away with second-class travel on our suburban lines, and I think it is high time we did the same on our long distance trains. Moreover, I should like to submit that the cost of travelling on our long distance trains is far too high. Here again I want to use the argument that you must encourage traffic in volume. To that end the fares should be made attractive. One can imagine if Max Wilson’s organization decided to hire a few trains between Cape Town and Johannesburg, what a reduction in fares there would be!—probably up to 20 per cent, if not higher. We have to take a more dynamic view of rail travel to-day. We have to keep up with the times. People’s habits change. They have become used to using cars, but the distance between Cape Town and Johannesburg is long and therefore they prefer using the rail. But then you must make it attractive for the man and his family and not ask him to pay these high fares which he has to pay to-day.

There is another anomaly. A motorist is allowed to rail his car at tourist’s rates. When he gets to his destination, however, he has to go to the trouble of depositing his passenger train tickets with someone in the goods yard before he receives his car. His passenger tickets are not returned to him until he has booked his seats for the return journey. In order to do this he first has to collect his passenger tickets at the goods yard, book his seats on the train and then take the passenger tickets back to the goods yard. It should be made much more convenient for the train traveller.

There is another item which the Minister does not mention; it is also mentioned in the General Manager’s report and that is the delays caused by congestion at the various harbours. We in this country have a terrific investment as far as harbours are concerned. We have a very up-to-date and substantial harbour in Cape Town; we have one at Port Elizabeth, East London and Durban. But you find that the volume of traffic offered in the case of Durban far exceeds their handling powers. Yet we have these very expensive ports both here at Cape Town and at Port Elizabeth which are quite capable of handling more cargo, standing half empty. I think this is a matter to which the hon. the Minister should give consideration. Some attraction should be made to shippers in Johannesburg and inland centres to ship their cargoes via Cape Town, Port Elizabeth or East London to obviate the delays at Durban, and reduce additional capital expenditure required to enlarge the harbour at Durban. You have the facilities at Cape Town and Port Elizabeth; why not use them. It is business-like to use those facilities. It might be necessary to offer the shippers of goods a rates tariff attraction to ship via particular ports.

As a Cape Western man I would like again to refer to something which I raised last year. I usually get fobbed off with this one, Mr. Speaker. What worries me is the lack of accommodation for deep-sea trawlers at Cape Town. I recently put a question on the Order Paper to the Minister of Commerce and Industries and he said it was not his particular job; it was the job of the Minister of Transport. We probably have one of the finest trawling industries here at Cape Town in the world. As hon. members will know, as far as the fishing industry is concerned, South Africa was sixth in the world in 1962. But in Cape Town, where these big trawlers operate from, there is insufficient accommodation. It is an impossible position trying to run a big commercial fishing fleet inside a harbour such as Cape Town. There are many big concerns who would like to come here and trawl off our coasts—some of them have arrived already—but they are forced to keep their trawlers in another port where the facilities are completely inadequate. We have competition on our doorstep to-day. We have the Japanese here and we have the Spaniards. They do not worry whether there is accommodation or not; they use factory ships. We in this country should build up our export markets and industries and should do everything possible to that end. The Minister might say to me: “If Commerce tells me they want the harbour and you give me the money I shall build it.” That was what he said last year. Commerce on the other hand says it is not their job, but his. I hope that between the Minister of Commerce and the Minister of Railways they will iron out this problem and do something for the fishing industry.

That, Sir, is all I have to say.

There is agreement on both sides of the House this evening that gratitude and appreciation must be expressed in regard to the increased salaries. There is just this difference that the Opposition want to take all the credit for those salary increases.

Of course; why not?

But we have also had an increase in pensions. We differ on this point and that is that the Opposition maintains that it was not necessary to increase tariffs in order to afford the increase in salaries. A fact which they lose sight of is that the hon. the Minister said in his Budget speech that if tariffs had not been raised, pensions could not have been increased either. I want to quote what the hon. the Minister said for the information of the Opposition—

May I ask a question? May I ask the hon. member whether that estimate was worked out on the estimated income for the present year or for the previous year?

I do not think that that question is relevant and I shall therefore not reply to it; my time unfortunately is also limited so I cannot go into the matter any further.

I want to approach our Railway Budget this evening from a practical point of view. I contend that when the history of the Republic of South Africa is written in years to come, the 1960’s will be regarded as the period in which the industrial and economic development of the country was a challenge to the nation. Besides this we have our transport policy and our transport problems which issue their challenge to us. It is generally recognized that the Republic of South Africa is on the threshhold of a great development and the question which must be answered in this Budget is whether the transport system is in such a position that it will be able to comply with the demands which are going to be made of it. It appears from the Budget that the hon. the Minister and the Administration are fully aware of the anticipated development and that they are putting their affairs in order. We also find that in his Report for the year ended 31 March 1962, the General Manager expressed himself as follows—

Furthermore, the framing of the Budget by the hon. the Minister indicates that this fact has been taken completely into account at this time. I want to refer in passing to the following: The extension of electrification. There is an impressive programme of electrification over an additional 663 route miles at an estimated cost of R22,100,000. This will bring the total electrification of lines up to 2,119 route miles. Because of this fact, electric locomotives must be purchased. This covers the purchase of 130 units already on order and costing R 16.500,000. It is pleasing to know that all these units will be manufactured in the Republic of South Africa. A further order has still to be placed; an order for a further 100 is being considered. Truck purchases: Provision is being made for the purchase of 6,900 trucks; there is the refrigeration equipment further to improve services supplied to producers of perishable products; there is the teleprinting equipment which has been ordered. All this will result in the economic use of rolling stock.

Continued attention is also being given amongst other things to increasing the carrying capacity of the Railways by doubling the remaining section of the Natal main line between Newcastle and Durban, the doubling of the Cape main line between Beaconsfield and De Aar and so forth. Then there is the building of the much discussed oil pipeline from Durban in order to relieve congestion on the sections between Durban and the Transvaal. This is adequate proof to my mind that the Budget has been framed in such a way that it will be able to comply with the transport requirements which our industrial development is going to make in the future.

In this connection and in this pattern, I want this evening to find an answer to a problem which is of real importance to the country in the present circumstances. This is the problem in connection with the transport of export maize. This is actually a new problem which has developed in an established industry because over the past years the cultivation of maize has changed to such an extent in tempo and pattern that our country, as far as maize is concerned, has also become an exporting country and will remain so in the future. I also read that the Division of Economics and Marketing has estimated that the domestic consumption of maize will reach 43,000,000 bags per annum by 1970. At least 35,000,000 bags per annnum will have to be exported. I also have a newspaper cutting here from the latest issue of Tegniek which reads as follows [translation]—

This maize must be produced as economically as possible if it is not to become a burden upon the State, and production will have to be adjusted so that the maize can compete on the world market. That is why the appeal is made to lower the production costs of maize. One of the many factors influencing production costs is the transport of maize, whether from the farm to the station, from the railway station to the consumer or from the station to the ports for export purposes.

I want to say immediately that I am not dealing here with the tariffs at which maize is transported. On the contrary, Mr. Speaker, I think that the tariffs at which maize is transported are very fair and are perhaps the cheapest in the world. But what is of importance—and this has an effect on production costs—is that the transport of export maize must be undertaken as cheaply as possible and yet as efficiently and as swiftly as possible. The transport of export maize has really become a matter of national importance. The problems which will have to be overcome in the future are the following. I quote from the Report of the Mealie Industry Control Board, on page 8 [translation]—

We are assured that the maximum export capacity of the Railways for export maize is about 25,000,000 bags per annum. Accordingly, there is an annual increase in the quantity of maize which must be carried over. This maize which is carried over results in storage cost amounting to considerable sums of money and this builds up a burden on the stabilization fund. In this connection I read in the review of the maize position by the Mealie Industry Control Board for the marketing season 1962-3 and the prospects for 1963-4, as follows—

Already this Budget supplies me with part of the answer to that problem. In this connection I want to refer to the fact that the hon. the Minister announced that a grain elevator with a capacity of 60,000 tons will be erected at East London. This project will be completed in three years’ time. The electrification of part of the railway line to which I have already referred and the building of the oil pipelines from Durban which will result in the Durban line being able to transport more maize so that the Durban grain elevator can be used to its full capacity, will all help towards largely solving this maize transport problem. But this is a policy which will take some time to implement and will not bring about immediate relief. That is why one wants to make plans to bring about immediate relief or relief within a shorter time.

I want now to raise a question with the hon. the Minister which has already been advocated by the North-West Regional Development Association in an interview with the Railway Board. I make no apology for raising this matter here because in our opinion the merits of the matter are sound and the matter itself is so important and urgent that it cannot be over-emphasized. Moreover, Mr. Speaker, I want to approach this matter from another angle and again emphasize certain facts. In terms of a guarantee agreement, a railway line was built from Whites to Odendaalsrus and from Odendaalsrus to Allanridge. That guarantee agreement expired on 31 December 1962. If this line is lengthened for about six or eight miles it will join up with the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line. The estimated cost to effect this junction is about R600,000. The junction will then join two railway networks to one another and this will mean a very great deal to those areas and ought to be an economic proposition for the Railways. The advantages of this lengthened line and junction will be as follows: In the first place, on the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line it is conservatively estimated that this year there will be about 10,000,000 bags of maize for transport. Most of that maize must be transported via Vier-fontein/Kroonstad to Durban/East London/ Port Elizabeth or Cape Town. Let us imagine that the junction is built there, we will then have an alternative route and the distances will be as follows: To transport maize or any other goods from Bultfontein via Kroonstad to East London or Port Elizabeth or Cape Town, the distance to Hennenman, where the two lines meet, will be 183 miles. From Bultfontein via Allanridge to Hennenman …

Where is Hennenman?

The hon. member will remember that. If I had not protected him then, Mr. Speaker, I do not know what would have become of him. I can understand that Hennenman is a sore point with him.

That is not relevant.

The distance from Bultfontein to that proposed junction will only be 88 miles. This is a shorter route of plus minus 95 miles. From Bultfontein to Kroonstad for goods destined for Durban, the distance is 152 miles; from Bultfontein to Kroonstad via Hennenman for goods destined for Durban, the distance is 118 miles, that is to say, a route which is 34 miles shorter. If we accept the fact that once the grain elevator is completed the East London harbour will largely serve this area, this gives us a considerable saving in route miles and the actual travelling time can be cut by hours. The transport of maize in bulk will be possible once the grain elevator which the Central Western Co-operative is building at Bultfontein is completed, but in the near future the largest part of the crop will be railed in bags. It is a recognized fact that on the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line there is a permanent shortage of trucks for reasons which can be easily explained. On the other hand again, eight miles from this line, numbers of trucks return empty on the Allanridge/Whites line and according to figures which have been given to me—which I do not want to vouch for but which are very close to the truth—between 600 and 700 empty trucks return monthly. If those trucks were destined for Bultfontein, a distance of 203 miles from Welkom via Kroonstad, only 68 miles would be over the other route.

I have already referred to the surplus maize. Here we have a striking example of what the position is. Here are the figures of the Central Western Co-operative for the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line. The Co-operative had 1,265,000 bags at its various depots on 1 May 1962, and this maize had to be carried over. This was out of a total of 3,132, 680 bags received by the Co-operative. In 1962-3,4, 589,595 bags were received and you can see that the carryover is going to be far larger. After this year’s crop which is a promising one, the amount of maize carried over will be increased even further. It was to this position that the Maize Board referred as being a chronic accumulation of export maize. In other respects too the lengthening of the line can be an asset. The area of Bothaville/Hopetown/Bultfontein is also a large animal husbandry area and thousands of head of small stock and large stock are marketed there annually. This area lies within a radius of about 50 miles from Welkom. It often happens that because of a hitch in the transport of slaughter stock to Welkom, carcases have to be imported from other centres in order to make up for the shortage of meat. This will also mean a great deal to the industrial development of the Goldfield complex because it will bring a potential market closer. This again will result in an increase in the transport of high tariff goods because trade in that area, according to figures at my disposal, has increased over the past 15 years by about 400 per cent. Besides this we can also mention the fact that about 80,000 tons of artificial fertilizer are used by this particular area annually.

Mr. Speaker, the guarantee lines Whites/ Allanridge have shown a profit in one year and a loss in the next year, according to the Report of the General Manager—in terms of the information on page 28 of the Report. The lengthening of that line and the resultant increase in transport ought to make this line completely economic. It can be further advanced that if that line is lengthened there will be large portions of the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line whose carrying capacity will have to be increased, but even if this has to be done the building of the line can still be an economic proposition.

In conclusion I want to sum up and say that the swift transport of export maize is a matter which has become of urgent importance. The building of that 6 to 8 mile line can be of considerable assistance too. It will accelerate the transport of export maize and bring about some measure of relief in respect of this problem for the near future. We are fully aware of the fact that the hon. the Minister has long-term plans in mind, but we consider this to be a short-term plan to give relief. The lengthening of the Whites/Allanridge line to join up with a point on the Vier-fontein/Bultfontein line, is a short-term plan, but above all else, Mr. Speaker, it will give the North-West Free State a connected network of railways which will give great impetus to the expansion of the Goldfield complex in all spheres. This in its turn will be in the general interests of the economy of the Republic of South Africa.

I feel sorry for hon. gentlemen opposite in this debate. One of their greatest duties is that they must praise the Minister and there is so little to praise in this Budget. No wonder that we had the major phenomenon that one gentleman opposite spent quite a considerable time telling the House all about the snakes and spiders which the Minister of Transport was transporting to all parts of the world. It seems to me that their praise has been prescribed by somebody because it is amazing how both the previous speakers stuck literally to their notes. I wonder whether there is already censorship on how to praise a Minister! The previous speaker said that the Railways were geared for the tremendous expansion which everybody opposite apparently envisaged. I say everybody opposite except the hon. the Minister, because if you are really to have this tremendous expansion in the next year that everybody opposite predicts, then I am surprised and amazed at the calculations of the Minister. If you look at the calculations in regard to revenue, you find that despite this surge of economic activity which we are apparently going to have, the Minister calculates that the increase in revenue will only be R25.2 million compared with R38,000,000 during the past year, a year which has certainly not been a miraculous, economic year. Has the Minister got confidence in this tremendous expansion or is he deliberately calculating the revenue as low as possible so as not to disclose a big surplus again? It is all the more amazing when you take into account that of this R25,000,000, the greater part will be due to the higher rates. Does the Minister not expect a considerable surge in the volume of transport and business as well? Surely if we are going to have a much higher rate of economic development in the coming year these figures of the Minister’s are very conservative because he has calculated that the increase in revenue will actually be smaller than the increase in expenditure. He calculates the increase in expenditure at R34,000,000 and the increase in revenue at R25,000,000. I say that if we have a good year as everybody opposite predicts, then these calculations of the Minister’s are going to be hopelessly conservative as in the past. It will turn out that he has under-estimated revenue, something which he has done several years in the past.

The Minister is enjoined by the S.A. Act to carry on this business of railway transportation on business principles. I am afraid, though, that if you read his statement carefully you will find that he has certainly not stuck to the spirit of the S.A. Act because some of his promised actions can certainly not be termed sensible actions in terms of economic or business principles. Some of his actions and some of his statements simply make no sense by business standards and by economic standards. I want to confine myself very largely to two of the statements which the Minister has made, statements which I say certainly make no sense by normal business standards or normal economic standards. On page 17 of his statement the Minister says the following in connection with the increase in tariffs—

Sir, I say that makes no business or economic sense at all. Surely if the Minister had been an industrialist living in a competitive world, instead of in a monopolistic world, he would have realized that the only way to meet that increase in the costs was not merely to pass it on to the consumer. The other very important way is to try to increase your efficiency and bring down to your own costs. But I am afraid that is probably the state of mind one develops when you live in a monopolistic world, a world where you can make your own prices, where you have no competition. There is no necessity for you to look at the cost side as well. As somebody once said: If your costs rise, well, just pass it on; do not bother to try to see if you can run your business more efficiently. That certainly is against all normal business principles as the Minister would have known had he lived in a competitive world, had he run a competitive industry instead of the most monopolistic industry in this country.

The hon. the Minister and other hon. members opposite have attacked industry and commerce and accused them of being responsible for whatever increase in cost of living might have resulted from this action of increasing the rates by 10 per cent. It is totally untrue to say that industry by and large have passed on this cost. I have here a statement of returns made to the Chamber of Industries which indicates that the large majority of industries in this country have had to absorb this cost. They have had no option because they live in a competitive world. For example, industries which are concerned with the export market, like chemicals, 89 per cent of the exporters say they have had to absorb the whole additional transport cost; in the case of metals and metal products 86 per cent have had to absorb the increase; in the case of printing 100 per cent have had to absorb the cost; in the case of food 60 per cent say that they have had to absorb the increased cost themselves; only 40 per cent were in the fortunate position of passing it on.

I thought you said that the increase was so high that industry would be unable to absorb it. Now you give figures to show how they have absorbed it.

I am quoting industries; these are not consumer goods. The increase in the cost of living, of course, has been absorbed by industry; it has been at the cost of industry, but what the Minister does not realize is that he is running a very important sector of industry and he must not just expect private industry to become more efficient and absorb the increased cost all the time.