Mr. Speaker, since the hon. the Minister introduced his Budget last Wednesday, we have had some days in which to study and analyse his proposals and it has been interesting to see the reaction of people outside, of the newspapers, of leaders in commerce and industry and finance in South Africa, all of which indicates that it is quite unnecessary for us to modify our first reaction to this Budget in any way. This Budget is a further sign, further evidence—indeed proof—of the Government’s neglect of the ordinary man. It is even more, Sir: It is proof of the Government’s indifference to the interests of the ordinary man and his family in South Africa; and in order to pin-point that fact as the main burden of the Opposition’s criticism of this Budget, I would like to move the following amendment—

When one studies the speech which the hon. the Minister made on Wednesday, one finds that it is dominated by two main features. The one is an allegation that the South African Railways and Harbours finds itself in trouble because after a rollicking first-half of the past financial year, the Government’s anti-inflationary measures started to take effect in the second half of that year with disastrous results on the operations of the S. A. Railways. The Minister wants us to believe that because the Government’s anti-inflationary actions were successful the S.A.R. & H. were unsuccessful. The second dominant feature of the hon. the Minister’s speech was an allegation that he was implementing the report of the Commission on Railway Rating and Industrial Location, the report of what is commonly known as the Schumann Commission. Sir, on close analysis of the Minister’s speech, one finds that both these averments are misleading. Neither of them is completely true. If one looks at the Minister’s excuses for the deterioration in the financial position of the South African Railways, one finds it is quite evident that it was not due to the success of the Government’s anti-inflationary measures. Indeed the Government’s strong measures against inflation, like the unpegging of the interest rates and freezing rents, were taken only after the general election. They were very astute to avoid any really unpopular measure before until after the general election. The general election was held one day before the end of the Railways’ financial year; so the real effect of those measures could not be felt in the second half of the past financial year. We believe that this deterioration was due to two major factors; one was the drought, over which we admit that the Minister had no control but in respect of which we pray with him that relief will come quite soon; the second was the deterioration in the earnings of the Railways due to the hasty, panicky imposition of import control by the hon. the Minister’s Government in August, 1965, which was strengthened in May of this year. This panicky imposition of import control to save foreign exchange reserves proved in the event to be quite unnecessary because of a fortuitous inflow of capital into South Africa afterwards and also because of the Government’s insistence that the imports should be financed out of the credit available from exporters. Sir, the imposition of import control, which seriously affected the high-rated traffic available to the S.A. Railways, was done against the advice, at the time, of financial experts, of industry and of commerce. In The Manufacturer of January of this year, for example, the chairman of the Chamber of Industries pointed out that they had warned the Minister concerned—not the Minister of Railways—that this imposition of import control was over-hasty, that it was unjustified, and that it would have serious effects on the cost structure of our country, which obviously would include the cost structure of the Railways. He pointed out that it would take nine months for the effect of this limitation of import control to be really felt in our economy and that once it was relaxed, as the Minister of Economic Affairs did relax it recently, it would take another nine months before the relief following upon that relaxation would become apparent. So there we have it, Sir! Those are more likely to be the reasons that affected the results of the S.A. Railways than the effectiveness or the success of the Government’s anti-inflationary measures. Insofar as the workings of the Railways were affected by the Government’s anti-inflationary measures, they were affected by panicky, and in the event, unnecessary measures taken by the other departments of the Government to fight inflation. And then the Minister came with the suggestion that what he was doing in this Budget was really to implement the recommendations contained in the report of the Schumann Commission. The report has been used as an excuse by the Minister for a general over-all increase in rates, but it is interesting, as I will show in the course of my speech, that a large number of very important recommendations by the Schumann Commission, intended to cushion the impact of increased railway rates were totally forgotten by the hon. the Minister. I shall return to that later. But the fundamental truth about the present situation of the S.A. Railways, which the Minister did not emphasize, is that we are in a period of inflation; we are living through a period of inflation to which the Government contributed much through its neglect, through its lack of foresight, and through its dilatory and delaying tactics, as was shown by the hon. the Leader of the Opposition during the debate on the motion of censure at the beginning of the Session. But, Sir, inflation in South Africa has now reached the stage when any general increase in the price structure of our country would be a most unwise thing to allow. We are living at a time when demand inflation is abating. As the economists say, we are living at a time when there is less upward pull on prices arising from a scarcity of goods in relation to demand. But, Sir, we now have a different problem, but a very serious problem, nonetheless and that is that demand inflation is being replaced by the problem of cost pushes in the economy, which are due to higher costs of production following on the period of demand inflation. Now, Sir, is the time when great vigilance is necessary on the part of everybody, not only on the part of commerce and industry as suggested by the Minister in his speech, but especially and more particularly on the part of the Government. Great vigilance is necessary to limit increases in prices, to limit further inflation as a result of cost increases. That is why we have heard—and it was even hinted at by the Minister of Railways himself on Wednesday—the threat of general price control; that is why interest rates have been unfrozen, imposing a burden of R15,000,000 a year on 250,000 bondholders over private homes in South Africa. That is why we had an announcement in this House last week of a drastic general over-all rent control by the hon. the Minister of Community Development. Sir, these things would make one think that it was the serious intention of the Government to fight inflation; but then the hon. the Minister of Railways came along last Wednesday and made a complete fool of his Government by doing exactly the opposite. He made a complete fool of the hon. the Minister of Community Development. He suggested in so many words that the Minister of Community Development was unnecessarily panicky; “that step was not necessary; I, the Minister of Railways, am going to increase costs by a further R46,000,000 a year.” Here, Sir, we have a contradiction once more, showing how hopeless and helpless the Government is in the face of the problems facing it. It is very difficult to assess what the effect upon prices throughout South Africa will be of this cost push of which the hon. the Minister was guilty last Wednesday. We do know that an increase in the railway rates causes a chain reaction in the country’s cost and price structure. As Dr. Waasdyk of the Witwatersrand University put it in a recent thesis he wrote on prices in South Africa—

And, Sir, the Minister knows it; he himself fears that there will be a further general round of increases in prices. That is why he issued that warning to commerce and industry, a warning to which I shall return. As I say, it is difficult to assess the actual effect of this cost push of which the Minister has been guilty, but I was interested to see, although I am not committed to this calculation in any way, that a newspaper like the Sunday Tribune yesterday reported that certain economists had estimated that it would be as much as R10 a month on the pay-packet of the average South African. I think that is rather high but it does show that economists and people who know are concerned about this and that they expect a further rise in prices as a result of the Minister’s action. Somebody must pay. If you suddenly demand another R46,000,000 a year from the public of South Africa in railway rates somebody must pay. If you suddenly demand from the public of South Africa R33,000,000 to compensate for wage increases which came too late—that is why they had to come as a sudden spate; they came on the eve of the election with a motive which showed longer than most petticoats that I have seen showing in South Africa—when you ask the public to give you R33,000,000 for that purpose and another R13,000,000 to compensate the Railways for inherited or delayed inflation, or whatever the reason may be, or just to prepare to cushion further shocks in the future, somebody must pay. The hon. the Minister has indicated that the S.A. Railways and Harbours under his administration will not pay; that they will not accept any responsibility for these actions on his part but will demand every penny of it from the public of South Africa—and more. The hon. the Minister has indicated that commerce and industry will have to carry part of this burden. I am confident that South Africa’s commerce and industry, being more public spirited and more concerned with the welfare of the people than the hon. the Minister or the Government, will carry or absorb part of this cost but there is a limit to what they can do. If the Minister can absorb nothing, why must they absorb everything? They will absorb some part of it but the brunt will be borne by the unfortunate end-consumer of the services of the S.A. Railways; he will have to find most of the R46,000,000 that the Government is demanding at a time of inflation such as we are experiencing at the moment. The Minister, as I have said before, knows this; that is why he came with his astonishing appeal to commerce and industry—a most remarkable piece of cant on the part of one least qualified to make such an appeal. The Minister has used his monopolistic power as the head of the South African transport monopoly to pass on all increases in rates to the public and to demand even more from the public. He can do this, Sir, because heading a monopoly, he need not fear competition; he can strangle competition in his other capacity as Minister of Transport. He can even strangle the competition from private road transport. He can strangle competition even though he is inefficient because he controls a monopoly over transport in South Africa. He can therefore afford, light-heartedly and recklessly, to pass on extra costs to the public, even at the most inopportune time. Sir, his position is even stronger because he provides an essential service to the South African public. He can say to the public: “Pay up or do without transport services”, a challenge which is impossible of acceptance by any South African citizen. Surely what is sauce for the Ministerial goose is sauce for the commercial and industrial gander. Why should the Minister be in the privileged position that he does not absorb any of the these increased costs but he makes these demands upon private enterprise in South Africa to carry the burden that he created. Why should these people somehow absorb costs which the hon. the Minister tells us he cannot absorb, or else he will not absorb. Sir, is it the intention of the Minister and the Government now to police all forms and all branches of enterprise in South Africa? In view of this threat that the Minister of Economic Affairs will be called upon to intervene, how will they determine whether a particular increase in prices is due to railway rates or to other factors? It is an impossible suggestion that the hon. the Minister made; it is a useless suggestion, but, Sir, the effects will continue and some of the effects are not in the hands of commerce or industry to control. I think, for example, of the increases in passenger fares. Those are a direct burden imposed by the Minister upon the users of the railways, with no intermediate industry or commercial enterprise to cushion the shock. What the people have noted is that this is a burden upon the working people of South Africa, the cummuters, the people who do not use their private transport and who are dependent on public transport. It is especially a burden on the poorest of all workers, the Bantu workers of South Africa. The Minister told us, for example, that long distance third-class passenger earnings are up by 11 per cent. I want to ask him why then the 10 per cent increase in long distance third-class passenger fares? We are told that he is implementing the Schumann Commission’s interim report, but that commission recommended that the special reduction given in third-class passenger fares over long distances should be abolished, and that is all they recommended. They specifically did not suggest that there should be an increase in long distance passenger fares. It is interesting to see what the position is in regard to these long distance fares. It will hit the poorest workers and it will hit an industry like the mining industry which has to transport hundreds of thousands of Black workers by train. It is interesting to note that in 1962-3, the figures quoted by the Schumann Commission, show that long distance third-class traffic incurred losses of only R300,000 as compared with R10,300,000 by first and second-class passengers. I have not got the latest figures available, but this increase will probably wipe out the loss on third-class long distance passenger fares, but it certainly cannot wipe out the loss on long distance first- and second-class fares. So I want to ask: is it the Minister’s intention in future to continue increasing first-and second-class fares so that they, too, will at least cover the direct cost of passenger transport? Why else has he not accepted the recommendation of the commission that these passenger fare increases should be extended over ten years to soften the impact? Why, in the case of the very poorest, does he seek to rectify the position completely in one year, and not in the case of the others? Why is there this scandalous discrimination against the poorest? But we know what will happen. What will happen, certainly in my city of Johannesburg, is that the employers will probably absorb this extra cost, because they are told not to pass it on.

But I do not want it to be thought that I am pleading here only for third-class passengers. The workers of South Africa generally are deeply perturbed. They have seen the pay increases they were given last year steadily eroded by inflation as the result of Government action or inaction. I should like to refer to a meeting of the Federal Consultative Council of Railways Unions which was held in Johannesburg quite recently. According to a report in the Press of the 18th and 19th of June this year, we find that these people were deeply perturbed at the inflation in South Africa and the erosion of their increased salaries since last year, and were particularly worried at the prospect that the Minister of Railways would do exactly what he has done in this Budget. I have a report here in the Sunday Times of 19th June—

They issued a statement which said that dissatisfaction was increasing because of the indications that further rises are in the offing and because of the unavoidable increases in railway tariffs and the resulting disproportionate rise in retail prices. Mr. J. H. Liebenberg, the chairman of the Federal Consultative Council, added something to this. He said—

And the Minister and the Government should note this—

On Wednesday or Thursday in the Johannesburg Press Mr. Liebenberg warned … (I think this was in the Rand Daily Mail, but I have not seen the paper myself; I am depending on a report that was sent to me) that unjustified loading of retail prices by commerce because of higher rail rates would lead to a further round of wage demands from trade unions later this year. That is what the Minister has set in train. That is the danger he has created. Mr. Liebenberg went on—

That is what the Minister is guilty of. Sir, and this is a statement by Mr. J. H. Liebenberg, whom the Minister quoted to us with great enthusiasm a little while ago as an expert upon the ability of the Minister himself. I hope he will also accept Mr. Liebenberg as an expert on the fate of the worker in South Africa.

But, as I said, the Schumann Commission did not envisage increases in rates only. In paragraph 602 and paragraph 605 and paragraph 584 they recommended, as I have mentioned in the case of passenger fares, a period of ten years for adjusting passenger fares, and also ten years for the adjustment of rates generally. They said they would be pleased if these increases could be completed over ten years. Has the Minister waited ten years? He has taken this opportunity of using the Schumann Commission’s Report as an excuse for a general increase in tariffs. In paragraph 582 the Commission confidently—how they misjudged the Government—expected that the adjustment of the tariff scales, which they wanted to be a more level progression, would mean a downward adjustment in some of the tariffs. But if you look at the memorandum the Minister kindly tabled for us, what do you find, Sir? That not in a single instance has any tariff been reduced whatsoever. All 14 of them go up and up. Tariff No. 1, the highest of all, goes up by 8.8 per cent; Tariff No. 2 goes up by 7.9 per cent; Tariff No. 3 goes up by 10.1 per cent, and Tariff No. 4 by 8.1 per cent. And the only one where the increase is lower than 6½ per cent is Tariff No. 5, which is up by 6.1 per cent. Why blame the Schumann Commission for what the Minister has done? They suggested that the adjustment of tariffs generally would give the Minister the opportunity to reduce some, and not an excuse for raising the whole lot.

You should read my Budget speech again.

I am coming to the Budget speech. That is the funniest thing we have heard in Parliament for years. But in paragraph 602 of the Report there was a recommendation that the cost of free tickets on the passenger lines and the revenue caused by them should be taken into account when determining passenger losses. Has any attempt been made to do that? That is not reflected in the comic speech the Minister made on Wednesday. Why should he hide behind the Schumann Commission? The Commission made a very important recommendation in paragraph 796. It said that there should within the Railways be a sub-committee to which people could appeal if they find that the impact of rates is unjust or uneconomic to their businesses. Why has that not been considered by the Minister? No, the report of the Commission has been mutilated in order to justify general increases in rates, with a total disregard of the recommendations which could be to the advantage of railway users and to the consuming public of the country, and at this time such an action is unforgivable. That is the only way to describe it.

But the situation is even worse, and now I want to say something about the Minister’s speech. The situation is even worse than appears from a surface reading of that speech. One has to delve a little deeper and go a little behind what the Minister told us to see what is really happening. I want to pay tribute to the political correspondent of the Rand Daily Mail, who did a very intelligent piece of detective work. He pointed out that because these increases in rates would only operate for seven months of the year, the Minister has in fact disguised the true impact over a full year of his increase in rates. In a full year the rates are being increased to the rate of R46.3 million, but the Minister has hidden away the fact that for the seven months he does not get the full R46,000,000, but that for the seven months he only gets R26.9 million and another R19.3 million will not be collected in the current financial year.

Was not that obvious to you?

Not immediately, but it is quite obvious to me now. And that is why, when the Minister budgeted for a deficit for this year, he was in fact disguising the fact that in a full year he was budgeting for a surplus of almost R10,000,000. Why was not that immediately disclosed to the House? Why did there have to be research work to determine this, that the Minister was in fact increasing rates more than was necessary to meet his needs; that he was doing exactly what has become the practice of the hon. the Minister of Finance, namely over-taxing the people, taking more from the people than he needed? Why did he do that, and in a manner which puts up costs in South Africa? This is not anti-inflationary; this must have a direct bearing on the cost structure of our economy.

Now I come to the funny part of the Minister’s speech. I did not even find it necessary to buy the comic supplement of the Sunday Times this week, because I looked at the Minister’s speech again. He gave three excuses for doing what I charge him with to-day. They were three beautiful excuses. He said that in the first place he had delayed the increases in rates for a considerable time after he had given the increase in wages. That was very kind of him, Sir, and we are deeply impressed, but that is not of any lasting benefit to the consumer. There is no lasting benefit to the consumer at all from this delay in increasing rates after the increase in wages and salaries. Indeed, as the result of it the picture has been clouded, as I have just shown. It was used by the Minister to cloud the picture, to pretend that he was budgeting for a deficit when in fact over a full year he was budgeting for a surplus of R10,000,000. The second excuse was even more amazing and a tremendous tribute by the Minister to the preceding United Party administration of the Railways, when he said that if you look at the price index since 1939 you will find that the general increase in retail prices has been 160 per cent, while goods traffic only went up by 118 per cent and passenger fares only by 89 per cent. That is true. If you look at the history of railway rates since 1939, they have risen more slowly than the consumer index of prices, a wonderfully commendable effort on the part of the South African Railways, and thanks largely to the good administration of the Minister’s predecessor. because under his régime exactly the opposite has happened. Under his régime—and these figures were not disclosed, which is so funny—railway rates are rising faster than the other index. Dr. Waasdijk, of the University of the Witwatersrand, in his memorandum shows that from 1957-8 railway rates have moved faster than the general price level. Excluding the present increases, the increase in rates in those years was 18.8 per cent, but if you compare the 18.8 per cent increase in railway rates with the wholesale price index you find that that index only rose by 7.5 per cent, and the index of consumer prices only by 14 per cent. Why did the Minister choose 1939 to make his comparison, and why not 1957-8 or some other year? Because he wanted to include for his own benefit the fruits of the administration of a man like the late Mr. Claude Sturrock, and he could not rely on his own administration. What a confession!

Then the Minister said we must forgive him for doing this to South Africa because his increases were selective and those sectors of the economy that suffer most will not be subjected to the increases in rates. Now, that is true, to a limited extent. It is true there was a general reprieve for Port Elizabeth and East London and that he did not abolish the preferential rates in their case. He retained the special port to port rates. He retained, and some people will be most grateful to him, even if it is only a small minority, the tourist motor-car concessions. And I am sure the Government will be most grateful to the Minister because he retained Government and provincial preference rates. He did not increase the rates on livestock, fertilizers, agricultural lime and crude naphtha, and that is all. In the case of many other things his allegation that he was selective is only half-true. Agricultural export goods, he told us, had been exempted in 1962, and would get further relief, but they would have to conform to the basic changes in the rating under his budget, which means an extra cost on these items of R2,400,000 a year. He was merciful to the gold mines because the cost of mine props’ transportation would only go up by R100,000. But that does not help much. All the other increases in rates must affect the gold-mining industry, which is still vitally important to our economy as a generator of activity and an earner of foreign exchange. Already we know that as the result of the inflation since 1962-3 millions of tons which otherwise would have been payable are no longer payable. As the result of these rate increases, more millions of tons of ore will be lost to South Africa, perhaps permanently. But the Minister wants us to take consolation from the fact that mine props will be transported to the Rand at a cost of only R100,000 more than before.

The Minister spoke about the transport of coal and said he would only increase the rate for coal by 7 per cent. That means another R3.7 million to be paid by the consumers of coal, chiefly by the power stations generating electricity and Escom. I am very curious to know whether it will be possible for Escom, which after all is not motivated by selfish greed as the Minister suggested commerce and industry was, to absorb all these increases and not to increase their rates for electricity, which will have another multiplying effect, another cost-pushing effect, on our cost structure.

The Minister could have been more selective. What about petrol? The Minister is not doing badly out of petrol. Already he is transporting petrol at a profit rate of some 400 per cent. Any private business that did that would be crucified for exploiting the public, but not the Minister. The Schumann Commission says there should be some relation between the cost of transporting the commodity and the direct cost to the Railways. But this presumably does not apply when the Railways exploit the consumers of South Africa as they do in the case of petrol. With the opening of the pipeline a large percentage of our petrol is being transported from the coast to the Wit-watersrand at even a lower price than when it was carried by the Railways, but there is no benefit; there is only an increase to the user of petrol. And fuel enters into the cost of every manufactured product produced in the country. The Minister could have been more selective; he was not being truly selective. I think, for example, of the extra R800,000 that he wants from cement. Already with the imposition of general rent control there is the danger that the supply of buildings in the country will fall off; already it has fallen off to a great extent, by half, we were told by the Minister. It will now happen to a greater extent and at a time when we are bringing in a record number of immigrants as the result of the immigration drive of the converted Government opposite. But they are reducing the stimulus, the encouragement, to the builders to construct homes for these people. Now we have this further imposition due to the higher rates on cement and, I take it, on other building materials as well. Where is the planning and the consistency, and where is the comparison between the policy of one Department and that of another? Where is the foresight? Where is the insight? If ever there was a time when Draconian action on the part of the Government was necessary it is now. If ever temporary measures should have been taken to prevent this impact, this push, on our economy, this was the time. There were so many alternatives that the Minister could have examined. He could have examined, for example, whether he should not have been willing to make greater use of the Rates Equalization Fund. I pointed out on Wednesday that there have been times when that fund was reduced to nothing because it was necessary in the interests of South Africa to do that. I pointed out that over the past 12 years most of the time that fund stood at between R10,000,000 and R15,000,000, with no disaster to our economy, and for the last two years only it has been more than R40,000,000. It was R55,000,000 before the Minister availed himself of it now. It was R30,000,000 two years ago. What is the Minister afraid of? What is the purpose of the Rates Equalization Fund but to avoid such jerks in the increase in rates to the public? Why not use it? What is the Minister preparing us for? What does he fear? Has he no confidence in the future? Why, in good times, must the railway users pay to build up this fund if it is not used to protect them at a time like this, when protection is vitally necessary? In fact, over a full year the Minister budgets for a surplus. He should rather have decreased that fund and used it for the purpose for which it was designed by his predecessors. If the worst came to the worst, at a time like this the deficit could have been covered by temporary assistance even from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, even though I believe that would not have been necessary, because I believe that with further relaxations in import control which I think will and must come if we want to relieve some of the inflationary pressures on our internal economy, Railway revenue must go up. I am one of those who believe that the drought will not last for ever. When the drought is broken the Minister will get relief in other ways, because primary exports will increase. I also believe that South Africa’s economy will tend to remain buoyant. The Minister himself spoke about the reduced rate of growth. I think it is something like 5.6 per cent for the next year. Why could not the Minister have had confidence in those things and have taken temporary measures to delay some of these increases until the country could afford them better? Then he need not have mutilated the commission’s report in order to justify a general all-round increase in rates. What does the Minister fear? Will he not take us into his confidence? I am trying not to believe that this was just sheer incompetence on the part of the Minister. I am keen to believe that he had some reason for it. Will he not tell us what the reason is, or does he want to force us to accept that he is not competent?

I will tell you.

Then we believe that it is necessary that the Management, the Administration of the S.A. Railways, should do more to get greater efficiency from the staff of the Railways. I am not saying that to criticize the staff, because I believe very strongly that to get true efficiency from staff is the responsibility of management in the first place. I was very interested to see in a recent report from the Bureau of Economic Research of the University of Stellenbosch that they had some very interesting remarks to make about South African labour. I quote from a report of this study made by the University of Stellenbosch, reported in the Sunday Times on 31st July—

In the meanwhile I wish to emphasize that all the signs, reading this Budget for what it is, indicate that we are dealing with a Government that has become smug and complacent. This Government has become indifferent to the real interests of the people. This Government believes in the divine right of Verwoerd, and no longer in its election by the people of South Africa. I believe, Sir, that the time has come that the Government should once more realize that it has to thank the people of South Africa for having placed it in power, and that in the meantime it owes something to the people of South Africa. This action at this time is proof of callous indifference to the real interests of the South African people. Because, Sir, this Budget is ill-timed, it is unwise, it is ill-considered, I move the amendment standing in my name.

Mr. Speaker, I find it a very pleasant privilege to reply to the speech made by the shadow Minister of Transport on that side of the House. In the past this was the privilege of the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East), and he always did it in such a competent manner that he is the Deputy Minister of Transport at present, an appointment on which I want to congratulate him very much, and I want to wish him further prosperity and success in his career. On the other hand, the hon. member for Yeoville, to whom we have just listened, still remains the shadow Minister of Transport on that side, and that little shadow is getting smaller and smaller!

Where it is now my duty to reply, I realize only too well that I am indeed not the hon. member for Bloemfontein (East). However, I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that I shall not be like the mouse which, after it had drunk a lot of brandy, stood on its hind legs and challenged the cat. That I shall not do. What I shall in fact do, is to match wits with the hon. member for Yeoville in a calm and reasoned manner. Sir, I have to reply to a speech I have just heard, and I have consequently not really had time to prepare myself. But I am after all in the fortunate position that, having been a member of this House for the past 15 years and having therefore had the opportunity to observe the irresponsible conduct of the hon. member for a period of 15 years, I did not find it difficult to anticipate what kind of attacks the hon. member would make here today. Therefore I want to admit openly that the hon. member has once again succeeded, and succeeded well, in making the most irresponsible attacks on the hon. the Minister of Transport. I anticipated that the hon. member would attack the hon. the Minister on the question of tariffs, which the latter was from sheer necessity obliged to increase, and that he would try to exploit the steps taken by the Minister for party-political gain.

Mr. Speaker, you will probably agree that I was in fact correct in my judgment. I also realized that the hon. member, owing to his irresponsible attacks on the hon. the Minister and the Government, would succeed in showing us what irresponsibility and incompetence we would have to deal with if the hon. member should ever become Minister of Transport. We know the hon. member to be like that. He becomes so excited at times that he says things for which he is later unable to account. We know that during the latest election campaign the hon. member, in his zeal to put the United Party in power, scolded supporters of the National Party for being people who preferred Barabbas to Christ. Is that not true?

That is untrue.

He involuntarily makes one …

That is untrue.

… think of the Beatles.

What has that got to do with the Railways?

Order!

Mr. Speaker, before the hon. member moved the adjournment of this debate last week, he said, inter alia, the following in his short speech in reply to the hon. the Minister’s Budget speech—

In his speech this afternoon the hon. member repeated the statement that the Government should be blamed for both the inflation found in South Africa at present and the abnormal rise in the cost of living. In reply to that statement I merely want to say that the hon. member can make that accusation once again when the general debate on the Budget is held next week. I am convinced that the hon. the Minister of Finance is quite man enough to give the hon. member a crushing retort.

But you cannot.

As far as the Budget is concerned, we are dealing with monetary measures applied by the Government to arrest inflation in South Africa and the effects they have on the Railways. Seeing that the hon. member once again charged this side this afternoon with being the cause of inflation in South Africa, I should like to ask him whether he is aware of the fact that inflationary tendencies are also to be found in America, in Britain, yes, all over the world. I want to know from the hon. member whether he is aware of that. Or does he not know that?

Now he does not talk.

Are you trying to defend the increases?

In those countries there are no National Governments which take the blame. Is this National Party also responsible for inflationary tendencies which are found in other parts of the world?

Mr. Speaker, the measures taken by this Government to combat inflation, are hard on all of us. They are very hard. I know that they are hard. However, in my modest opinion the action taken by the Government can be compared with that of a surgeon attending a patient who is suffering from cancer in a serious degree. He has to decide whether he should operate, or whether he should hurt the patient very much in an attempt to save his life, or whether he should stand with folded hands and allow the patient to die.

Cut off his head.

I know that the Opposition is delighted to be able to exploit the position. They are as pleased as punch because they are able to blame the Government for the inflationary tendencies in the country, even though they know that it is not true. If that side is convinced that it is indeed true, they can try to prove it during the debate on the Budget next week. Nevertheless, I trust, Sir, that we shall all be prepared to sacrifice now, with the prospect that at a later stage all of us will live and not die.

The hon. member for Yeoville kept on harping on the fact that the hon. the Minister does not want to use the Rates Equalization Fund to supplement his deficits, the more so because he did in fact use it in the past to supplement his deficits. Well, that is the case and I shall not dispute it. That was the way the Government acted in 1958 and 1959. On subsequent occasions the Government also used the Fund to meet deficits. However, I shall return to this point at a later stage.

There is one small matter I want to settle with the hon. member for Yeoville, and that is probably one of the meanest things I have heard in the House to-day. A few days ago I also heard it. I am referring to the accusation that, shortly before the election—in October, 1965—the Minister increased the wages and salaries of Railwaymen by R33,000,000. The Minister did in fact do that. However, now we come to the mean part, because the hon. member for Yeoville maintains that the hon. the Minister knew at that time that he would increase tariffs accordingly in this Budget of his. Now, what does the hon. member mean by the words “shortly before the election”? [Interjections.]

Order!

He means that it was really a political move on the part of the hon. the Minister to obtain the support of Railwaymen. The hon. member maintained, however, that by increasing tariffs at this stage, the Minister simply wiped out all those salary increases. The hon. member went further, because he said that the Minister had taken the same steps in 1962 when he had increased the salaries of Railway officials by R21,000,000. Did the hon. member say that?

Yes.

And then the Minister came to the next session of Parliament and increased tariffs by 10 per cent, as a result of which he collected double the amount of the increases. That is what the hon. member maintains. Surely, that is not true. Sir. The hon. member is telling a downright lie. [Interjections.]

The hon. member must withdraw his words.

I withdraw the words, Sir, and I say that it is an untruth.

You might as well withdraw the whole speech, since it is no good.

I say that it is an untruth, Mr. Speaker. It is indeed a fact that the hon. the Minister increased the salaries of Railwaymen by R21,000,000. It is also a fact that the hon. the Minister increased certain tariffs by 10 per cent, which resulted in additional revenue amounting to R22.3 million and not R42,000,000. That is true, and if the hon. member is so ignorant about railway affairs, I cannot help it. There you have the typical attitude of the hon. member, an attitude of trying to stir up suspicion all the time, of placing the hon. the Minister of Railways in a bad light all the time.

The Minister himself will correct you.

The Minister will admit that that is the truth. He will admit that the amount collected as a result of the increase, was not R42,000,000 but R22.3 million.

I want to return to the argument advanced by the hon. member that the Minister can use the Rates Equalization Fund to cover his deficits. Nothing is the matter with that; it has often happened in the past that deficits were supplemented by funds withdrawn from the Rates Equalization Fund. That happened in 1960. the year in which the Minister consolidated the cost-of-living allowances of the staff with salaries. There was a deficit at that stage and an amount of R14.8 million was used to consolidate cost-of-living allowances with salaries. The loss that resulted that year was supplemented from the Rates Equalization Fund. That was also the case in 1948-9—that is quite correct—when the Minister completely exhausted the Rates Equalization Fund to meet the loss, and the deficit that remained then he carried over to the next year. This year the Minister did exactly the same thing. There was a loss of R13.9 million in the year 1965-6, and the Minister supplemented that loss from the Rates Equalization Fund seeing that the Fund was strong. At present the Fund still stands at R41,000,000. Seeing that the hon. member is making such a terrible fuss and pointing out that the Minister, according to him, wants to exploit the entire population through increased tariffs, I want to ask the hon. member to do a small calculation with me to see what the ultimate result will be. At the end of 1965-6 the Rates Equalization Fund amounted to R55.113 million. At that stage there was a loss of R13.9 million which the Minister supplemented from the Fund. An amount of R41.213 million was then left in the Fund. In the Minister’s Budget Speech (page 31) he gave a summary of the expenditure during the year 1965-6, viz. an amount of R630.5 million. The revenue for that year amounted to R616.6 million. I want to ask the hon. member to look at the Minister’s speech on page 53. There the Minister gave an explanation of his revenue and the expenditure for which he was budgeting. He states that the expected revenue for the year 1966-7 will amount to R672.5 million and that the expenditure will be R51.5 million more than the expenditure of the previous year. In other words, his estimated expenditure will therefore be an amount of R682,000,000 and the revenue is being estimated at R672.5 million. That means that the Minister is budgeting for a deficit of R9.6 million. Let us return to our calculation. The present balance of the Rates Equalization Fund amounts to R41.213 million. If the Minister did not increase tariffs, he would have had to meet that additional expenditure from the Rates Equalization Fund. That means that he would have had to take R51.5 million from the Rates Equalization Fund, and if he had used everything—the R4I.213 million—he would still have had a deficit of R10.3 million which he would have been unable to meet from the Rates Equalization Fund. If we add to that that he is budgeting for a deficit of R9.6 million, the Minister would have ended the year with a deficit of a little more than R20,000,000, and then I should like to know what the hon. member for Yeoville would have had to say about the Minister of Railways. He would then have been justified in criticizing and condemning the Minister for his maladministration of the finances of the Railways. To me this is very clear proof that we and the people outside can be very grateful that the hon. member for Yeoville is not Minister of Railways. In other words, the Minister had no option. He had absolutely no option than to increase tariffs. Does the hon. member for Yeoville think for one moment that the Minister of Railways took pleasure in increasing the tariffs? It is obvious that he did not take pleasure in doing so, but he had no option. He has to manage the Railways, which is a business undertaking, on a business basis, and when there are deficits which he is unable to supplement from the Rates Equalization Fund, he has to find the money somewhere, and the only manner in which he can obtain it is by increasing tariffs. The hon. member for Yeoville now makes the accusation that the Minister actually deceived the public since the tariff increases, which will amount to a total of R26.26 million, represent the higher revenue which he will receive over a period of 12 months. However, that is also not true and the hon. member can ask the Minister whether I am wrong. This amount was calculated over the period of seven months of the past year, and not over 12 months. We know very well that part of the year is past, and this amount is the amount that will be collected as a result of increased tariffs during the remaining seven months. As I have already said, there is nothing wrong with supplementing deficits from the Rates Equalization Fund, but then it should at least be done judiciously; then it should be done as the hon. the Minister has done it in the past, not in the irresponsible manner in which the hon. member for Yeoville is carrying on, but in a responsible manner. One should meet deficits from the Rates Equalization Fund when one realizes that one’s revenue for the following year will be such as to enable one to replace the amount one has withdrawn from the Rates Equalization Fund. I wonder whether the hon. member for Yeoville is of the opinion that when the hon. the Minister drafts his budget, he simply does it in an arbitrary manner, according to his mood that morning. That is not the case. If ever there was a Minister who and an Administration which in the drafting of budgets thoroughly examined all possibilities for the ensuing year, then it is this Minister and his Administration. All the bodies concerned are consulted. The extent to which high tariff traffic will decrease or increase is determined, i.e. by how much the traffic will decrease or increase. The Economic Advisory Board of the Prime Minister is consulted; the Chambers of Commerce and Industries and all bodies dealing with the economy of the country are consulted and the Budget is drafted accordingly and not haphazardly, as the hon. member for Yeoville wanted to suggest here in the most irresponsible manner. I repeat that there is nothing wrong with meeting deficits from the Rates Equalization Fund. However, we are living at present in a time in which we do not know what may happen tomorrow or the day after, and I think all hon. members will agree with me that we in South Africa do not have many friends. The United Party will immediately tell me, “Yes, that is as a result of the policy of the National Party”. The hon. member for Durban (Point) will say that immediately.

That is true.

We do have enemies, not only the National Party, but the White man in South Africa. The United Party and the National Party and all Whites in South Africa are faced with problems and dangers and we never know what may happen tomorrow. If the Afro-Asian states should have their way, they would persuade the United Nations to apply sanctions and boycotts against South Africa as soon as possible. What does the hon. member think will become of the railways in South Africa if we had no reserves in our Rates Equalization Fund? For that reason I want to appeal earnestly to the Minister of Railways to strengthen the Rates Equalization Fund and to develop it and, if possible, to build it up to at least R100,000,000 so that we may be prepared for anything that may happen in the future. [Interjections.] Yes, I know that the hon. member for Durban (Point) is so irresponsible that he does not realize what I am saying here. He is accustomed to making interjections; consequently I do not really blame him. I think that if we view the Budget of the Minister of Railways soberly, we have to congratulate him and we have to admit that he has drafted his Budget with foresight and that he has taken precautionary measures against everything which may possibly be in store for us in the future.

The hon. member for Yeoville has merely tried to make political capital for the United Party this afternoon. He tried to incite against the Minister not only the people of South Africa, but in particular the servants of the S.A. Railways, but he will be as disappointed as he has been in past elections. Railway servants regard the present Minister of Railways as the best Minister they have ever had since railways came into existence in South Africa. Railway servants are aware of the fact that the National-Party Government is a White man’s Government and that it will do everything within human power to ensure the survival of the Whites in South Africa. In the future they will place their trust in the National Party just as they have done in the past.

I should like to remind the Opposition of what this Government with its Ministers of Railways has done for railway servants in the past 17-18 years. I wonder whether they do in fact realize that from 1948 until 1966 the salaries of railway servants and officials have been increased with a total amount of R192.137 million. This Government and these Ministers are supposedly not looking after the railway servants! This is the Minister against whom suspicion is being stirred up! I want to point out further that this Government built no fewer than 12,137 departmental houses for the railway staff during the period 1948 to 1966. This Government did everything in its power to improve the working conditions of the railway servants, not only by increasing their salaries, but also by providing them with houses. During the period 1948 to 1966 this Government appropriated an amount of R45.9 million under the House Ownership Scheme to assist railway servants in obtaining houses. Under the House Ownership Scheme, with 10 per cent assistance from the Railways, this Government appropriated an amount of R6.47 million during the period 1954 to 1966 to assist railway servants to obtain houses in that manner. [Time limit.]

In the earlier part of his speech the hon. member for Bethlehem spent some time making a personal attack on the hon. member for Yeoville and then later on he talked about the Afro-Asian powers and the protection of the White man, when the Minister is taking R7.9 million directly out of the pockets of the poorer people of this country. In spite of that, however, the hon. member did not say one word in support of those poorer people. He criticized the hon. member for Yeoville for remarks which he had made about railway salaries. Does the hon. member for Bethlehem remember that it was only about a year ago—more than a year ago—at the time of the last Budget when this side was pleading for a better deal for railwaymen, that it was no less a person than the Prime Minister who said that they did not need any more—they only desired more. I wonder if the hon. member remembers that. When we discussed the last Budget he gave no support whatsoever to the pleas of the railwaymen. By implication this afternoon he has fully justified all the increased burdens which are being put on the shoulders of the ordinary man as well as the burdens caused by inflation. The hon. member justified inflation by saying that there was inflation in other parts of the world. Sir, we are concerned with inflation in this country. The Government talks with two voices, as the hon. member for Yeoville said. One moment basic food prices and rents are pegged to save the economy. With this increase in transport costs now it is inevitable that un-pegged prices will rise. The Minister has asked commerce and industry to absorb the increased rates, but his very excellent advice is not followed by the Minister himself. He does not bear any of the increases himself by asking the Rates Equalization Fund to bear some of them. No, he has asked the public to bear the lot, and that attitude is fully justified by the hon. member who has just spoken. You see, Sir, the Government is half-hearted in its attempts to curb inflation. When it gave more freedom to institutions which borrow money to raise interest rates it showed a wise intention when it took the teeth out of the policy by freezing rents. Now the Railway Budget raises the cost of transport but demands a freeze of the prices of commodities. The Minister’s policy is: “Do as I say; don’t do as I do.”

Revenue shows an increase of R33.9 million for goods and coal. Sir, I would like to ask the Minister of Economic Affairs, who is responsible for the Electricity Supply Commission, the following question. While the Electricity Supply Commission is not directly controlled by the Government any increases and any policy matters come under the scrutiny of the Minister of Economic Affairs: Has the Minister of Economic Affairs given the Minister of Transport the assurance that electricity prices will not be increased? Will he assure the public that these increases in the cost of coal will not be passed on through increased rates for electricity? Will the assurance be given to all distributors of electricity that the Electricity Supply Commission cannot increase tariffs by passing on the increase in the price of coal to the consumer? You see, Sir, certain municipalities have the right to distribute electricity which they buy in bulk from the Electricity Supply Commission. The Durban municipality is one example. They have the right to supply not only the citizens of the whole of Durban but to supply citizens within a 25-mile radius of Durban. These people buy their electricity from the Durban municipality which buys in bulk from the Electricity Supply Commission. Will this increase in the price of coal be passed on to the Electricity Supply Commission and will they in turn pass it on to the Durban municipality and will the Durban municipality then raise its charges by a margin just sufficient to cover the cost or will they charge a higher tariff, a tariff which will enable them to make a profit? Will the Minister of Economic Affairs give us the assurance that any increase in the tariff rate for petrol will not be passed on? Has he had an assurance from the oil companies that the increase in the cost of transport of petrol will not be passed on to the public? Because if he has not had that assurance and if the Minister of Railways as Minister of Railways has not had any consultation, then his whole speech consists of a series of pious platitudes because the Minister of Railways is not in a position to control it. It is the Minister of Economic Affairs who controls it. If this increase is passed on by the oil companies, it will be passed on by the people transporting goods. As the Minister knows, the question of transport and deliveries in our big metropolitan towns is an important matter in costs and a fractional increase in the price of petrol is used in many cases as an excuse or as an argument for increasing the charges for distributive services. When the Minister asks commerce and industry to absorb these costs, as he did in his speech, has he had an assurance that he is going to get the full co-operation of his colleague, the Minister of Economic Affairs?

I want to deal particularly this afternoon with the question of passenger fares, because that is the biggest shock of the Minister’s Budget. It is a direct imposition on the ordinary train user. I would suggest that the time has arrived when the Minister should review his accounting system as far as passenger fares are concerned. I submit that the Minister is giving a distorted, inaccurate and false picture with regard to passenger revenue. In saying that it is false I want to make it quite clear that I do not mean that it is done intentionally, but I think the system which has obtained for many years gives a false picture.

Order! The hon. member must withdraw the word “false”.

Sir, I am not suggesting that the Minister is distorting the picture. I am suggesting that the accounts are distorted.

To make the position absolutely clear, will the hon. member withdraw the words “false” and “distorted”?

I withdraw them, Sir, and say that the accounts give a totally incorrect and false picture of passenger revenue. I want to preface my remarks by saying that I do not query the system in the Railways whereby railwaymen are given privileged tickets, whereby certain civil servants are given privileged tickets and whereby members of various Government Departments are given low fares, but there is no accounting in the passenger revenue for these low fares. For example, if a railwayman pays a quarter fare the passenger revenue just discloses a quarter fare. The balance of three-quarters should be credited to passenger revenue and shown as a debit to the particular service. The passenger revenue department is virtually subsidizing all the other departments of the Railways. For example, if a man employed in Airways gets a concession fare by train the amount he pays is credited to the passenger revenue department of the Railways to the extent of, shall we say, a quarter fare. As far as the remaining three-quarters of the fare is concerned the passenger revenue department is in effect subsidizing the Airways or the Airways personnel. I submit that what should be done is that there should be an entry in the books disclosing the extent of the benefit received by the Department concerned, in other words, the extent of the subsidy received from the passenger department. You have this state of affairs that as the railways are used more and more by railway servants and less and less by the outside public you could reach a state of affairs where it will be uneconomic to run the railways and it will have to come to a standstill, and with the passage of years and an increasing number of people using suburban transport particularly, we are getting a false, incorrect picture of the real position. Let me give this example: If in a big business the staff are allowed to buy goods at cost price, the practice is to deduct the cost price of goods from the company’s purchases and not to credit them to sales, because if they were credited to sales, they would give an incorrect position of the gross profit of the department concerned because the department concerned would show a sale to an employee, a sale which is not a genuine sale, a sale without any profit at all. That in effect is what the Railways have been doing for many years, and as the numbers of suburban passengers are increasing and as more and more of them are Railway servants, the picture is becoming distorted with the passage of time. I suggest that the time is long overdue when there should be a thorough investigation into the whole question of passenger revenue. You see. Sir, the Department keeps no passenger mile statistics. We hear that suburban transport is losing. We are told from time to time that the passenger services are losing money, and yet we find this very facet dealt with by the Schumann Report, which discloses quite clearly that the position in regard to passenger revenue is clouded because they cannot get a clear picture of the amount of revenue which comes from privileged tickets and subsidized fares. Until such time as we can show the extent to which the passenger service is subsidizing other departments of the Railways, we will continue to get this remark by the Minister and his successors that passenger services do not pay. You see, Sir, we are rapidly reaching the stage where the passenger department is subsidizing other departments and the Minister is using this hidden subsidy as an excuse for putting up passenger tariffs. He is increasing first- and second-class passenger fares by 20 per cent, and the first- and second-class fares are mostly the working people who have to commute between the suburbs and the large cities. They are the people who have to bear the burden, on the basis that the Minister assures the House that the passenger services are losing. Yet, as the number of railway workers living in the suburbs increases, so in turn will passenger revenue show a loss, until such time as the Minister can show his revenue in proper perspective. I suggest that the time has arrived when the Minister should know how many railway workers are travelling on his suburban trains and to what extent the fares from railway workers are subsidizing other departments. A worker may work in the Salt River Works and travel at quarter-fare season ticket from Plumstead, and in effect the Minister is subsidizing the Salt River Works as far as that worker is concerned. And it is not only that subsidy. Some years ago a lower tariff was provided on the Cape suburban railways, and that special tariff was introduced so that the Railways could meet competition from the buses. Surely if the passenger service is economic, the Minister should not be crying about meeting the competition of the buses, unless the Minister can show us the correct break-even point in his costs. But one policy is adopted as far as suburban fares on the Reef is concerned, and another policy is adopted in regard to the Peninsula suburban railways, and there is another policy in regard to the other local services. With all those different fare policies the Minister is still left with the basic problem of the subsidization of other services by concession fares, which run right throughout the passenger revenue system. I suggest that until such time as the Minister can show us the correct passenger revenue, taking into account the various subsidies, he should call a halt to this present increase of 20 per cent and 10 per cent, and he should allow the Rates Equalization Fund to carry it in the meantime, until he has had a proper investigation. He does not know. I do not blame him, because his staff cannot give him that information, and this aspect has not been seriously considered because it is thought that these concessions probably amount to a small proportion of the whole. But the impact of rail concessions and the privileges granted to so many different departments of the Public Service and to the Railways—and I do not dispute the right to these privileges—makes me think that the time is due for this matter to be shown in its proper accounting perspective so that one can see the extent to which these services are being subsidized. Now the Minister is asking the public to bear a 20 per cent increase on first and second-class fares, and for the non-Whites there is a 10 per cent increase, but there is not the information on which to justify it. You just have the Schumann Commission’s Report, which itself says the position is clouded. I think it is essential that this should be fully investigated, because until such time as it is investigated the public is being called upon to bear an unfair burden.

There is a further problem, and that is the increase of 10 per cent for non-Whites. It is Government policy that the non-Whites have to live in outside areas. Is it not time that Government policy should demand that the various departments responsible for that should make their contribution to the Railways? If it is Government policy to carry on a particular service, should we not see the actual cost of that worked out as an item in the Consolidated Revenue Account? If we had that, we would start to know what the cost of Government policy was, instead of its being hidden in the Railway accounts. It is not without precedent, because with certain Government expenditure the Government has called upon the departments concerned to make the appropriate contribution to the Railways for the services they render. I suggest that if it is part of Government policy to carry non-Whites to their towns, the Government should pay for it. I know that in regard to guaranteed lines they have to make a contribution to the Railways, but for other services I suggest that there’ should be a special Vote crediting the Minister’s Department for the cost of the service. That also is suggested in the Schumann Report. I suggest that we should know the cost of Government policy, and it should not be hidden by the fact that there are no actual figures available. It is essential that we should be in a position to weigh accurately the cost of settling these people in townships long distances away from the centre of town. For example, we have the new Chatsworth line, which will carry a large number of Indians to the city of Durban. It is essential that we know what the profits and losses are on that service. The Minister says it is a guaranteed line, but there may be a number of passengers on it who are Railway workers. It is essential that we should have a clear picture of the extent to which a service of that kind becomes a burden on the general taxpayer and is not lost sight of in Railway revenue. The Railways at best are submitting arbitrary costs to us. We know that the long-distance goods and passenger services and the suburban passenger services all traverse the same lines. There is the question of the allocation of permanent way costs and the allocation of locomotive costs. All those costs are distributed on an arbitrary basis. That is the position in any railway system. If the Minister tells us that passenger traffic is losing money and is uneconomic we accept it with a considerable amount of reservation until such time as he can show us a clear picture and can convince us that not only are the costs accurate but the basis on which the costs are allocated is fair and reasonable. Until such time we will have considerable doubt and I do not think the Minister is justified in asking us to accept this Budget on the basis of his speech. Not only has his speech given us little information, from its very nature it is a general speech, but the supporting accounts give us very little on which to base either the fairness or the equity of his charges. I submit that the Minister should at least halt the suburban increases until such time as he has had an opportunity of making an accurate assessment of the cost per passenger mile. He has no passenger mile statistics. None have been kept for 20 years, if at all, and I think the Minister will agree with me that the incidence of privileged tickets over recent years is such that an assessment of the effect on the income is very much overdue. I hope the Minister will appreciate that until such time as he makes a proper assessment, he is placing an unfair burden on those people who are least able to bear it. Not only is he putting an undue burden on the railwayman by imposing the 10 per cent or 20 per cent increase as the case may be. but also on the ordinary worker who is being asked to subsidize not only the Railway servant but many of the other services to an extent which he is not able to analyse either by an examination of the Minister’s speech or of the accounts he laid before us.

The hon. member for Pinetown devoted a large part of his speech to the increase in rates, and both the hon. member for Yeoville and the hon. member for Pinetown emphasized the fact that the low-paid people, the Bantu and the Coloureds, have to foot the whole bill, and that the heaviest burden falls on them. I just want to say that from the realistic point of view they have perhaps never gone so far as to consider that that specific class of people, the Bantu and the Coloureds, are the people whose wages have risen most in the past years. I remember very well that 15 or 20 years ago the Bantu worked for 35 cents per day and the Coloured perhaps received 50 cents per day, but what do they get at present? To-day a Bantu gets R1.50 jer day, and the Coloured even more. To claim that they will be hardest hit is surely to create the wrong impression. You can go to the race-courses on any Saturday afternoon, to Milnerton or Kenilworth, and look at the thousands of Bantu, many more than there are Whites, who wager money at those racecourses, although not on a large scale. Where 20 years ago one found no Bantu at a racecourse, they now have the money to do that. The hon. member for Yeoville also concentrated on the increase in rates, but he carefully avoided any mention of the economic development of the country and of why vast amounts have to be spent in order to keep pace with the economic development of the Republic. [Interjection.] The hon. member may have referred to that, but he did that in such a way that nobody could notice it. Vast amounts had to be spent to develop the country. In the course of my speech I shall quote figures to demonstrate that. The money that has been spent has to be repaid, and interest has to be paid on it. I am inclined to take some exception to the fact that the hon. member for Yeoville made special mention in his speech of the fact that the Bantu are now the hardest hit by the increase in rates. To-morrow it will be published in the Press, and it is a direct way of inciting the Bantu against the Whites, which is so unnecessary. If we consider what has been done for the Bantu in the past years, and a responsible member and front-bencher of the Opposition comes along and makes a speech, and only mentions that the Bantu are having such a hard time …

I mentioned what Mr. Liebenberg said, and I mentioned all the workers.

I say that it is unfair of a front-bencher to make that kind of speech.

I said that I would try to demonstrate in the course of my speech how the demands made on the Railways have increased continually. My first question is whether our Railways can carry the traffic; is it possible to transport the traffic which is offered? My reply to that is, yes, every ton of freight which is offered is transported. There is never a waiting list for wagons or passengers. The second question is: is the railwayman contented and happy; is he working under oppressive conditions or under fortunate conditions? Here again, my reply is that he is working under fortunate conditions, and the reason for that is that his interests are being taken care of, much better than in the time of the United Party. The hon. member spoke about deficits. He wanted the deficit to be met from the Rates Equalization Fund. It could have been defrayed from that, but we do not dispose of our times. It would be imprudent if a farmer, having built a shed and sheared his sheep, demolished the shed just before the bad weather set in, but that is the type of farming the United Party wants at present. When bad weather sets in, there is no shelter. The hon. member for Yeoville did not say a single word about the deficits that occurred under their regime. The current deficit is not something exceptional. When there were deficits in the time of the United Party, there may perhaps have been a reason for those deficits, because they should perhaps not have occurred. They did not look after the railwayman. No houses were built for him and no facilities were created for him. I have been sitting here for the last 17 years. I have large railway centres in my constituency and I know their position perfectly well. I saw under what conditions they were living, but go there today and see what this Government has done for them.

Did your Government start the home ownership scheme?

It is no use starting something without carrying it out. I do not want to allege that members on that side were opposed to the increase in wages, but I get the impression that because there is a deficit now, they may be sorry that those salary increases were made last year. It would have suited them much better if those wages had not been increased. But now it is a sin. Shortly before the election, however, before the wages were increased, prominent members of that party told the railwaymen: We are fighting for that increase in wages. But has one of them ever got up in this House to do so? One cannot blow hot and cold, because sooner or later one story catches up with the other, and that is what has now happened to those hon. members. As I said, I shall try to show where the large amounts of money have gone to, and I iust want to make a few comparisons. I have long lists here, because I have made a study of them, to demonstrate what the position of the railwayman was in their time, and what it is to-day. Take a railroad worker. In 1948 the ordinary railroad worker received R37 per month, and in 1966 he received R110. I mention that just to show how this Government has looked after the railwayman. A clerk Grade I used to receive R1.408, and now receives R2.875. The hon. member may suggest that the cost of living has risen, and that is true, but has he calculated what the percentage increase in the cost of living has been? While wages have increased by nearly 200 per cent, the cost of living has increased by less than 70 per cent. In other words, that man is now better off by 130 per cent. The hon. member is shaking his head because he does not have these particulars, but why did he not try to get them? Nowhere in his entire speech did the hon. member for Yeoville deal with railway matters; he merely tried to play on sentiment, and because he put up such a show in the House he thought that people would listen to him, but we want to hear figures. The improvements in respect of the staff amount to almost R109,000,000 over the past eight years. The people are grateful for that and we receive service for that. Only yesterday, on the Sunday afternoon, I went to the Cape Town station and the service I received there was impeccable. That is the reason why the Opposition cannot understand the fact that the railwayman votes against them at elections, and why? Because all they do is to make a few speeches in this House, and then they throw him to the wolves.

I want to go further and show how the railwayman’s position has improved. I come back to the wages over the past five years. In that period they have increased by R1,357,000,000. Now I want to ask my friends whether they ever considered looking after the railwayman when they were in power. No, they thought he was only a railwayman and should not own a motor car or a decent house like others. But to-day the people appreciate what the Government has done for them. Let us take the best of all—their position when they retire. And here I want to quote a few figures. When he draws a pension, he is still looked after very well; much better than under the United Party régime. In 1948 a clerk Grade I received R550 per year, and now receives R1,275 after 40 years of service. [Interjections.] A driver received R433 and now receives R1,222. A shunter received R315 and now receives R692. [Interjections.] I wonder why the hon. member for Yeoville is getting so restless. It is because he is now getting a few facts as to how the railwayman is looked after. The hon. member for Bethlehem dealt with the question of housing, but I just want to mention a few figures he did not mention. From 1948-9 to 1964-5 nearly 12,000 houses were built for the railwayman at a cost of R70,000,000. Then there were also various other schemes, such as the home ownership scheme, where a further 2,000 people were helped to get houses. The housing scheme under the building societies helped nearly 9,000 people to get houses.

We now come to the development of the country, which the hon. member carefully avoided, and which is the reason why these great investments have been made. If it had not been done, there would have been a glut of traffic; if the Minister had not looked ahead, built more lines, doubled lines and straightened curves. He also speeded up the trains. I am surprised that the hon. members on the opposite side did not also mention the accidents this afternoon, but I suppose we shall hear about those in due course. From 1960 R10,017,000,000 has been invested in capital works. I can see the hon. member is startled now. It is understandable that that has resulted in a tremendous growth in the country’s economy. It simply had to be done, otherwise the traffic would have accumulated. It cost a great deal of money to electrify and double certain lines, and to shorten certain lines by straightening great curves. I am thinking only of the short stretch of line between Beaufort and Colesberg, where quite a few miles were gained by straightening unnecessary curves. Instead of 11 hours it now takes 11 hours. In order to meet the growing economy, many passenger coaches and wagons have had to be bought. Nearly 33,000 new passenger coaches have been bought in the last five years. The hon. member for Pinetown gave me the impression that in his opinion the passenger trains transported only officials. He said that the few passengers who travel on the passenger trains had to subsidize the officials’ journeys. That is what he meant. I have made a note of that.

You are wrong.

I shall still prove how many passengers are in fact travelling on the trains. During the past five years 567,000 new wagons have been bought for the transportation of livestock and other goods. That shows you that a large amount of capital is being invested. It had to be spent in order to keep abreast of the economic development of the country. The train mileage completed is further proof. In 1961 just over 100,000,000 train miles were completed. In 1965 almost 116,000,000 train miles were completed. In other words, the traffic has increased by almost 15 per cent. The tonnage transported is further proof. In 1961 88,000,000 tons were transported on the Railways. In 1966 105,000,000 tons were transported. That is therefore further proof of the tremendous economic growth of the country.

At this stage, when there is the possibility of friction among the non-White races in this country, the United Party should not come up with a speech like that made by the hon. member for Yeoville this afternoon. He singled out the Bantu and mentioned the increase in their rates, without telling this House that during the past year the Bantu have also received benefits from the Railways in their wages. The Minister sitting here will be able to tell us in detail what the Bantu are receiving from the Railways to-day and what they received approximately 15 years ago. According to information I have received, the Bantu were very poorly treated in the past. Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a request to the hon. the Minister. I did that last year, and I am doing it again. This request relates to the people on the Railways who have made mistakes. Sometimes they put their hands too far into other people’s pockets. Perhaps they took things belonging to the Railways. In other words, they committed transgressions. They have been punished for those transgressions and I think that that is quite correct. My request relates to people who have served their punishment. I receive many letters from people who were suspended from the Railways and who would like to return. They want another chance to return and to resume their work on the Railways. Then there are persons who resign from the Railways for some reason or other, for example because they do not want to accept transfer. After a month or six weeks they regret having done so, and then they want to rejoin the Railways. I want to appeal to the Minister to take those people back into employment. Many of them are very good officials. In conclusion I want to congratulate the Chairman of the Select Committee on Railways on the promotion he has received. He deserves that. He worked very hard while he was Chairman of our group. I wish him everything of the best.

Mr. Speaker, I hope the hon. member for Colesberg does not expect me to follow him. He has adopted the usual practice of the Government of drawing the proverbial red herring across the track. We have been given details this afternoon of the improvement in the position of the Railway worker. We know that and we are grateful for it. But the whole position in the country has changed to such an extent that there has been an improvement in the position of every worker. We hope that that will continue. That is, however, not the important concern this afternoon. Nor are we very much concerned with the capital expenditure of the Railways, except for one matter which I will point out when I deal with the question of Equalization Fund. I do not know how correct the hon. member’s figure of R10,000,000,000 is, but I think he is very much off the mark. When we listened to the speech of the hon. the Minister on Wednesday, our major problem was what the policy of the Government in the fight against inflation was to be. I personally listened to the speech more in sorrow than in anger, although, having listened to the speech of the hon. member for Yeoville this afternoon, I think he listened to it in anger, because he said that the hon. the Minister of Transport had made fools of the Ministers of Finance and Economic Affairs. That is true, but why I listened to it in sorrow was that we had hoped, after the announcements of the hon. the Minister of Finance a few weeks ago, that at last we were going to get a proper direction for the solution of the economic problems which this Government has led us into. No sooner do we feel a little hope, than the hon. the Minister of Transport comes into the picture and wrecks all the good that has been done. It is quite obvious that the hon. the Minister of Finance and his colleague the Minister of Economic Affairs are trying now, at this late stage, to do something about inflation. But the hon. the Minister of Transport suddenly pours R46,000,000 into the kitty. We wonder what good that is going to do. When one deals with a problem such as inflation, one of the most important aspects in the curbing of it is the psychological climate one has to engender amongst the population. One has to have the right climate to do specific things. One of the greatest means of creating the right climate is the example that can be set by the Government. When one deals with matters such as inflation, the public wants to know that the Government means what it says. They want to know that the Government means business. When one has a position like the one we had last Wednesday, when there was an addition of R46,000,000 to railway rates, one must agree with the Cape Argus of 11th August, 1966, where it was stated:

Mr. Speaker, it is no good the Minister of Transport telling us that his costs have gone up. We know that his costs have gone up. But then the costs of industry have also increased. The costs of industry will go up as a result of the increase in interest rates. What does the hon. the Minister want the industrialist to do about that? He wants him to hold his prices in the interests of the country. The cost of properties is going up as a result of the increase in interest rates. The landowner is having his costs put up. But the Government goes further than making a request. It imposes control of rents, so that the landlord in many cases is going to suffer. But not this Minister; he does not want to work along those lines. He says: My costs have gone up. I am going to recoup them fully from the public. The tragedy is that when the Railway rates are increased, one starts an arithmetical progression, or as the hon. member for Yeoville said, a chain reaction, because each separate unit has to bear its own increase. The final product will bear the cumulative increase of all the increases that go to make up the whole. Let us take the simple example of a can of peas. Look at the increase t*hat is going into the cost of that commodity as a result of the increase in the Railway rates. The tin manufacturer will be faced with an increase in his rates to bring the raw product to his factory. His price will therefore go up. The printer who prints the labels will have an increase in the cost of transporting the raw material to his factory. As a result of the increase in the price of coal, the cost of electricity will go up. The cost of power will therefore go up. The farmer, sending his product to the canner, will have his rates increased, so his price will go up. The canner himself, taking into account these various increases, has to increase his price. As a result the wholesaler has to increase his price. Eventually the retailer has to increase his price, which the man in the street pays. The cost of Railway rates is a cumulative process which does more damage to the economy of the country than the raising of any other single cost factor. The hon. the Minister wants commerce and industry to absorb these increases. We know this is impossible. Commerce and industry will not be able to absorb those increases.

Are you sure that that is what the Minister asked?

Commerce, industry and business usually work on a cost factor plus a percentage of gross profit. The percentage of gross profit will automatically be increased as the prices of the unit components of the finished product increase. What the Minister is asking industry to do is to scrap its normal system of accounting and costing and simply to add to the total cost the actual amount of increase. Industry might do it. But how they are going to receive from the purchaser an eighth of a cent or a quarter of a cent or a third of a cent I do not know. The hon. the Minister tries to put some bite into his threat by saying that if commerce does not behave itself, we will come back to price control. If there is anything that will aggravate the problem of inflation in this country, it will be price control because we know from past experience that in many cases a controlled price becomes the normal price and as soon as the control is removed, there is a substantial drop in price. The question we ask ourselves, Mr. Speaker, is: were these increases necessary and did the rates have to be increased now? The Rates Equalization Fund has been mentioned by the hon. member for Yeoville, by the hon. member for Bethlehem and by the hon. member for Colesberg. I follow the argument of the hon. member for Yeoville very clearly. He simply asked the Minister: Why do you not use the Rates Equalization Fund to deal with the shortage in your budget? I could not follow the argument of the hon. member for Bethlehem, because he arrived at an amount of R30,000,000 which would still be left in the fund and I do not know what he proposed to do with it. He took the fund as it was at the moment, with R55,000,000, deducted the R13,000,000 deficit for last year and the R9,200,000 this year, and was left with a balance of R30,000,000. What did he want us to do with that R30,000,000?

You did not listen.

I shall tell you what we wanted done with it. As the hon. member for Yeoville said, we wanted to utilize it for the purpose for which this fund was started. What is the purpose of these funds? What are they for? Does the hon. the Minister of Transport want to take the money home and count it every night? If he is not going to use it for the very purpose for which the fund was set up, when he has a short-fall, what is he going to do with it? Let us assume that he is going to have a profit on the Railways next year. He will transfer some more funds from Revenue to the Rates Equalization Fund and the fund will grow bigger. If he has four or five good years, it will grow bigger and bigger. If he is not going to use the fund in bad times, I do not know what he is going to use it for at all. He might as well scrap it. Here I want to join issue with the hon. member for Colesberg. If the capital expenditure of the Government had been correct, at the right time, this Rates Equalization Fund would have been twice as big as it is to-day. You will remember, Mr. Speaker, the goods lying around and the ore lying at grass which the Railways could not move for many years. Because they could not do so, their profits were very limited. Their profits were much less than they could have been. If the capital expenditure had been of the right amount and used at the right time, the Rates Equalization Fund would have been much bigger to-day and we would not have had this problem. But, Sir, this Rates Equalization Fund is in very good shape. We credited it with R10,000,000 in 1954-5 and with R2,500,000 in 1955-6. We withdrew R4,000,000 in 1957. It was credited with R4,500,000 in 1958. 1959 was a bad year and the hon. the Minister withdrew nearly R16,000,000. I should like to know from the hon. the Minister why he withdrew R16,000,000 and does not want to withdraw anything now except the R13,900,000. What is he going to do with this fund, Mr. Speaker? The fund is not the hon. the Minister’s. The fund consists of the money of the public which they have paid to the Railways, which in turn has taken it and put it into the Rates Equalization Fund so that in bad times there need be no further imposition on the public. This is the purpose of the Rates Equalization Fund. It is no good the hon. the Minister saying that he is keeping it for a rainy day. It is raining like fun now, Sir. It is raining to the extent of R46,000,000. That is the purpose of the umbrella. For Heaven’s sake, let us use the umbrella.

The point is that even if there were no increase in rates, what would the Minister’s position be? He tells us that, having increased the rates, he is going to budget for a deficit of some R9.200,000. But has the Minister taken all the facts into account? I do not know when the Minister prepared his Budget speech and when he prepared his estimates, but I would hazard a guess that it was before the hon. the Minister of Economic Affairs advised the country of a relaxation of import control. I do not know what the relaxation amounts to. I know that in so far as the stock to be held by industrialists is concerned, the change from four months to six months of stock holding has apparently made a difference of some R50,000,000. The Department is now asking the industrialists to buy that amount of stock. What the overall difference is going to be, I do not know. What I do know and what the hon. the Minister knows is that when there is more importation, there are extra wharfage charges, extra dock dues and extra railway traffic. Has the hon. the Minister taken into account the increased income he is going to get not only as a result of a direct increase in importation, but also as a result of all that flows from it? This is another one of these chain reactions. If you receive more goods, you make up more goods and more goods flow. The whole picture of the amount of traffic can be changed by greater imports.

The Minister of Economic Affairs made a speech about three weeks ago in which he said that he expected continued prosperity and continued expansion in the economy of this country. I know that the Minister of Transport has taken into account in his Budget certain increases in railway traffic. But has he taken into account the increases that we can expect from the continued expansion in our economy? I know that there is a credit squeeze, but, Sir, this is probably a fairly temporary measure. It may continue for a year or two and then we will be on our way again. The main problem with the Government is that their timing is always bad. We are trying to curb inflation. I will not go as far as the hon. member for Bethlehem and say that the patient will die unless a very drastic operation is performed. Some measures have been taken to curb inflation. The Railway Budget is an additional measure and no doubt we will hear other measures on Wednesday. But the timing, Mr. Speaker, is so bad. When you have taken steps to try to curb inflation and then do what the hon. the Minister has done, it makes a mockery of any attempt by the Government to put the economy of this country on a sound basis.

Mr. Speaker, the question of petrol has been mentioned. If I read the hon. the Minister’s figures correctly, he made a profit of some R3,000,000 last year on the pipeline. Now he has put up the price again. Why has the user of petrol got to continue to carry the Railways year after year? Perhaps the hon. the Minister will tell us that in increasing the cost of petrol in the inland centres he is not increasing the cost of living and that he is not increasing the possibility of inflation. Petrol is also one of these things which has a chain reaction. It affects one person, then another, and so it progresses.

In regard to ores, the Minister has raised the cost of railage considerably. As his reason he says that we have to try to increase the refining of ores in this country. I agree with the hon. the Minister on that point. I hope the Minister will tell us what the position is in regard to the refining of ores. As far as I know, certain refineries have been set up which are working very successfully. Certain others are in the process of being set up. The hon. the Minister knows as well as I do, or better than I do, that to set up a refinery for the processing of ore, there are two requirements. The first is an enormous amount of money, in many cases in the region of R10,000,000. Secondly, a very long time is needed. I hope the hon. the Minister is not going to kill the goose that lays the golden egg, and put up his tariff charges on the unrefined ore, before he is in a position to refine that ore. If he does this, he will find that if there is any resistance from the purchaser overseas as a result of these higher charges, that he is not going to be able to divert the ore to local refineries. The ore will lie at grass because there is no buyer overseas and there is no buyer locally. Mr. Speaker, I think there is no doubt—and I hope that we will have an answer from the hon. the Minister when he replies to this debate—that the overall effect of this Budget has mitigated against achieving what every single economist, business man and industrialist and even the Minister of Finance wants to do in this country, namely to bring down the cost of living which, as the hon. member for Yeoville has said, is proving to be a terrific burden on the man in the street. The hon. the Minister of Transport seems to be completely oblivious to all this. He of all people should know that this is the case. Perhaps, after having listened to the debate, he may find that it is not necessary to make this imposition on the public of South Africa. He may decide to change his mind at the last minute and use the Rates Equalization Fund.

Mr. Speaker, the main objection raised against the increase in tariffs by the hon. member who has just resumed his seat was that it would promote inflation. The same objection was raised by the hon. member for Yeoville. But I wonder why the hon. member for Yeoville prefers to refer to the Sunday Times and the Rand Daily Mail only. Why has he not also read about the hon. the Minister’s Budget speech in the latest Financial Mail

I do not agree with that, except in respect of the gold mines and I have mentioned that.

The Financial Mail stated the following—

That also serves as a reply to the hon. member for Parktown—

Will you please tell me now what that means, because I do not understand it.

Mr. Speaker, next week and the week after that this ignorant Opposition will have every opportunity of being properly informed about inflation. It is not a matter which belongs in this debate. If a deficit is anticipated in the Railways, the Railways have an extremely limited field in which to avoid or supplement that deficit. The Administration may avoid or eliminate the anticipated deficit either by reducing the salaries and wages of the staff or by decreasing expenditure—operating or administrative expenditure. The Administration may also meet the deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund, if funds are available, or additional revenue may be earned by increasing tariffs. We all agree that the reduction of the salaries and wages of the staff is an idea which does not even deserve consideration. As regards the decreasing of expenditure, the Administration and the management of the Railways are always trying to curtail expenditure and to increase efficiency and productivity. The hon. member for Yeoville has said that he would like to see greater efficiency on the Railways. When did the hon. member gain the impression that there should be greater efficiency? Only two years ago it was none other than the hon. member for Yeoville who used the very efficiency of the Railways as an argument. He said the following:

According to the speech of the General Manager before the Uitenhage Chamber of Commerce towards the end of last year, the productivity of the Railways increased in the preceding year by 4.64 per cent while the staff increased by only 1.92 per cent. This is a notable achievement which the Minister should have taken into consideration and which he did not take into account when he framed his Estimates last year.

Therefore he used the efficiency of the Railways as an argument against the Estimates framed by the Minister at that time. Proof that this aim, namely increasing the productivity of the Railways, is being achieved is to be found in the fact, as the hon. the Minister quite rightly said in his Budget Speech, that although the retail price index has increased by approximately 160 per cent since 1939, goods tariffs have increased by only 118 per cent and passenger tariffs by only 89 per cent. Now the hon. member for Yeoville has said here that during the term of office of this Minister tariffs on the Railways have increased more than during the term of office of any other Minister. He also made the statement that the increase in tariffs exceeded the increase in the consumers’ price index. That is not true. He has to make his calculations all over again. Since 1954 goods tariffs have increased by 27.6 per cent. That is inclusive of the proposed increase. Retail prices have increased by 32.6 per cent. Passenger tariffs have not been increased by a single percentage since 1954 up to the present time. Everyone will concede that it is simply an impossible task to decrease expenditure considerably during a time of rising prices, of ever-increasing costs and of continual increases in wages and salaries, and, besides, in an economy which is always expanding in a growing country where ever-increasing demands are made on the national transport system.

The Minister could have done either of two things. The first of these is to meet his deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund. In this connection it surprised me that the hon. member for Yeoville to-day asked that the Minister should have met his deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund. Now I want to ask the hon. member when he acted irresponsibly—in 1959 or to-day? In 1959 the hon. member said—

That was what the hon. member for Yeoville said in 1959.

That is not relevant at all.

Of course it is. But I want to go even further and I want to ask the hon. member whether he was irresponsible either two years ago or to-day.

He is always irresponsible.

Two years ago the hon. member said—

There is nothing wrong with that.

The point is that two years ago the hon. member did not want this Fund to be exhausted, whereas he is advocating something else to-day.

The Fund should only be used in a case of emergency and not permanently.

What emergency does the hon. member have in mind? He himself said a short while ago that we had a strong economy which was still growing. That being the case, why should we use the Rates Equalization Fund in a time when we have a growing economy?

It is necessary in circumstances such as those of to-day.

As regards the Rates Equalization Fund, it should be borne in mind—but apparently hon. members are not doing so—that the deficit of the previous financial year as well as the estimated deficit for the current financial year has to be paid by the Fund. Taken together it comes to a considerable amount of R23,500,000, i.e. approximately 43 per cent of the present balance of the Fund. Therefore the position is that for every R3 of revenue which the Railways require to balance their books R1 has to be taken from the Fund. The necessity of having a strong Rates Equalization Fund for keeping the Railways on a proper and sound business basis is realized by all. This point was strongly stressed by the Opposition in the past. But in view of the considerable withdrawal which will have to be made from the Fund, the Administration has had no option but to resort to increases in tariffs—no matter how regrettable it may be that it is necessary.

However, when an increase of tariffs was decided upon, we proceded very cautiously and judiciously. The proposed increases were formulated with due regard being had to their effect on the various sectors of the national economy and to the recommendations of the Schumann Commission. That then is the basis of the proposed increases.

The Opposition’s amendment mentioned unjust and undeserved increases in the cost of living and the costs of production of South African agriculture, industry and mines at a time when South Africans were already paying heavily. But if hon. members opposite allege that the proposed increases in tariffs are unjust they are allowing their imaginations to run away with them. If the hon. member for Yeoville says that the proposed increases will cause a tremendous rise in the cost of living, and that those increases will hit particularly the man in the street very hard, surely that is not true? Let us examine what effect the proposed increases will have on a series of products and articles which are basic to the cost of living. We find that the effect of the increases will really be very slight. The proposed increases expressed as percentages of the retail price calculated on the average haul of the following products and articles are as follows:

As regards meat, there is no increase in the tariff in respect of livestock and there is also no increase in respect of milk in cans conveyed by passenger train.

Do you now want us to believe that the cost of living is going to decrease?

That hon. member is so credulous that the danger exists that he may believe that quite easily. In any case, from the figures I have quoted above, it is quite clear that the tariffs in respect of products used in the preparation of the three basic staple foods, namely bread, meat and porridge, have been increased by an insignificant percentage only. In the case of other foodstuffs which are important to the ordinary White family, the proposed tariff increases should not cause the prices of the products concerned to rise by more than an average of a quarter per cent.

Another important factor which should be borne in mind in this connection is that the prices of some products are controlled by the authorities and that increases in prices are only allowed if rising costs seriously prejudice the profit margin of the sector concerned.

Such as petrol?

I want to concede that as a result of the relatively high increase in the tariff on petrol, on the basis of which the price of petrol will definitely be increased, as well as the increase in suburban train fares, the transport costs of the ordinary worker will increase. I readily admit that. The increase in the cost of fuel will be approximately 21 per cent while the passenger on trains will have to pay 20 per cent more. As regards the price of petrol, does the hon. member forget that it was this hon. Minister who made a considerable concession in this connection two years ago? Two years ago it was none other than this hon. Minister who decreased the price of petrol considerably. However, I can give the hon. member the assurance that if the price of petrol is going to be increased, such increase will not exceed the reduction which the hon. the Minister allowed two years ago. As regards suburban train fares, the hon. member is aware that this item has not been increased since 1954. One will immediately realize how cheap suburban train journeys are if one compares that with the prices on urban bus services. The price of a first class monthly train ticket between Sport-park and Pretoria, i.e. a distance of seven miles, is R2.85, while the bus fare for one return journey per day from Waver ley to Church Square in Pretoria, also a distance of seven miles, amounts to R6.50 per month. After the proposed increase in tariffs the price of the train ticket concerned will be R3.42, i.e. still more than R3 less than the price for a ticket on the suburban bus service between Waverley and Church Square.

How does that help the user?

I have said that I admitted that the proposed tariffs would cause an extra burden in this respect.

That is the point.

Then why are you arguing? I want to say how glad I am that the Government has instructed the Minister of Economic Affairs to keep a close watch on any possible increase in the retail price because what happened after the tariff increase of 10 per cent in 1962? What did those people do at that time—the people whom the hon. member for Yeoville described here this afternoon as being so patriotic and acting so responsibly? At that time the increase in tariffs was used as an excuse for increasing prices in such a way that the profit they made on certain articles exceeded the increase in transport costs. Let me quote you a few examples. On cement the increase in railage was 1.4c per bag while the retail price of cement was increased by 2c per bag. The increase in railage on condensed milk was .03c per tin while the retail price was increased by lc. On floor polish the increases were .214c per tin and 3c per tin, respectively; on fruit drinks .26c per bottle as against 2c per bottle; on apricot jam .22c per 2 lbs. tin as against 3c per 2 lbs. tin. As regards printing paper the increase as a result of increased tariffs was R1.34 per ton in Bloemfontein while the retail price was increased by R5 per ton; in East London the respective increases were R2.06 as against R5 per ton; and in Cape Town R2.76 per ton as against R5 per ton. On Post Toasties the increase in railage was .069c per 8 oz. packet as against an increase of 1c in the retail price. I trust that we shall not have a repetition of what happened in 1962. On this occasion, too, commerce was quick to object to what the hon. the Minister suggested, namely that in many cases the small increase which would be caused by increased railway tariffs could be absorbed by commere and industries. In this connection the hon. member for Yeoville said that the appeal of the hon. the Minister surprised him. Is he still of the same opinion after having listened to what happened in 1962?

But the hon. the Minister is also increasing his prices. What is good for the hon. the Minister should also be good for commerce and industries.

To my mind the hon. the Minister was completely justified in adopting this attitude.

The United Party’s amendment also objects to the effect which increased tariffs will have on the agricultural sector. The truth is, however, that the tariffs, referring to the agricultural sector have been increased by very little on the whole. As a matter of fact, there will be no increase as regards such basic items as livestock, fertilizers and agricultural lime. As against an average increase in tariffs of approximately 10 per cent in respect of goods, the average increase in respect of agricultural products comes to approximately 3 per cent only. The reason for such a decision was apparently that it was felt that some concession should be made to the agricultural industry on account of poor conditions in the industry. However, in view of recent increases in the prices of agricultural products, it was felt that agriculture could also make a small contribution towards covering increased expenditure on the conveyance of agricultural products. The increases in tariffs amount to an average addition of approximately 1 per cent of the value of the agricultural products concerned. That will have an insignificant effect on agricultural production costs and will in no way have an adverse effect on the volume of agricultural production.

The amendment of the United Party also mentions an unjust increase in the industrial sector. As far as that is concerned, the effect of the proposed tariff increases may probably be best judged on the basis of particulars concerning a number of basic raw materials and the principal manufactured goods. The proposed tariff increases will result in the following percentage increases in the prices of the given products, delivered over an average haul:

(a) Raw materials:

(b) Manufactured goods:

From this table it will be seen that the increase on iron ore is substantial. That, however, is the result of the abolition of the special tariff on iron ore over short hauls. Nevertheless it only amounts to approximately 4 per cent of the value of the product. Because the increase in railage on the manufactured product, such as ferrochrome, bolts and nuts, amounts to less than 1 per cent of the value thereof, it means that the total additional railage for the industry expressed as a percentage of the value of the products marketed, will be approximately 2 per cent at the maximum. If one takes the haulage of iron ore over long distances, one finds that the tariff increase expressed as a percentage of the price on delivery is much lower than 4.16 per cent. For instance, from Sishen to Houtkop it will be 1.30 per cent and from Sishen to Newcastle 2 per cent.

In respect of another key product, namely coal, the tariff concerned has been increased by approximately 7 per cent on an average. Because the price of coal is so low with the result that railage is quick to influence the price on delivery, the increase of 6.12 per cent on the price on delivery seems to be high in comparison with that on other products. However, if one further investigates the haulage of coal from the coal fields to distant urban areas, one finds that the tariff increases expressed as a percentage of the price on delivery, are lower than 6.12 per cent in certain cases. In the case of the haulage of coal—because it is the percentage tariff increase I am talking about—the percentages are as follows: From Vandyksdrif to Cape Town—5.9 per cent, Vandyksdrif to Port Elizabeth—3.9 per cent, Vandyksdrif to East London—4.5 per cent, Vandyksdrif to Bloemfontein—5 per cent, and Vandyksdrif to Kimberley—4 per cent. Mr. Speaker, as regards the effect which the proposed tariff increases may have on commerce, I want to say that the price increases practically without exception amount to less than 1 per cent of the value of the articles concerned. In determining the price at which local manufacturers sell the articles to dealers, the additional railage on raw materials, will have to be taken into account in addition to the railage on the manufactured product. Data indicate that the joint effect of that should not be more than 2 per cent of the price of the manufactured product on delivery. Such a slight change in price could hardly have a marked adverse effect on the volume of trade.

Now, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member complained that the tariff increases had not been selective.

Not selective enough.

I cannot agree with the hon. member. The increases are selective, and they are also selective enough. It can hardly be argued that the proposed tariff increases will impede production and will restrict new expansion. Neither can it be argued that the retail sector will be prejudiced too greatly. Still less can it be argued that agriculture will be prejudiced too greatly. As regards cost of living, there will possibly be a minimal increase only.

Mr. Speaker, I maintain—and with that I want to conclude—that the proposed tariff adjustment will have the following effect. In the first place it will cause a minimum increase in the cost of living. In the second place it will benefit the agricultural sector—especially that branch which is labouring under the consequences of protracted droughts—as compared with other sectors. In the third place, because the major part of the additional revenue will be obtained from the commercial sector, its effect will be felt the least because of the relatively high value of the commodities concerned.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure that the hon. the Deputy Minister of Transport will forgive me if I do not follow the trend of the debate and deal with the speech that he has just made. I want to raise with the hon. the Minister a couple of matters which affect the Coloured people of this country and which flow from the Railway Budget proposals. I am sure, Sir, that the Deputy Minister will in due course receive a full reply to the speech which he has just made. Before leaving the hon. the Deputy Minister, though, I want to associate myself with the congratulations extended to him from various sections of this House upon his well-merited appointment.

Mr. Speaker, there are a few matters affecting the Coloured people which I wish to refer to briefly in this debate. In the first instance I want to refer to the Minister’s decision to increase both main line and suburban train fares by between 10 and 20 per cent with effect from 1st September. As far as this decision affects the poorer section of our population, and particularly the Coloured people, I would say that this is an unfortunate decision. The poorer sections of our people, and especially the Coloured people, are going to be hard hit by the hon. Minister’s decision. I should like to say immediately that I agree with the Minister when he says that rail fares have not risen commensurately with the rising cost of living since 1939. But nonetheless I feel this is not sufficient reason to increase rail fares in one fell swoop. Because, Sir, that is exactly what the hon. the Minister is proposing. If the Minister felt that rail fares should rise commensurately with the increased cost of living, then he should have brought about small increases from year to year. In any event, it is very difficult for anyone to equate an increase in rail fares with an increase in the cost of living. I realize only too well that the suburban train services in this area have been running at a loss over the years. But this position was quite obvious to the hon. the Minister’s Department. They knew very well that these services were being run at a loss. There could not have been any real objection to the introduction of slight increases from year to year to overcome the uneconomic running of the suburban railway services. Small increases year by year, I venture to suggest, would have been accepted by the public. But this big jump in the fare structure will undoubtedly cause a great deal of hardship, particularly among the poorer people of our community and especially among our Coloured population. I say, Sir, that it will particularly hit hard the non-European users of our suburban lines. Of necessity the Coloured artisans, and especially the Coloured non-skilled workers, have to make use of the railway services to go to work and return to their homes. The hon. the Minister will appreciate that, because of Government policy, large numbers of Coloured people have been removed from their homes in the central parts of the city of Cape Town and have been obliged to occupy new homes on the outskirts of the city in areas far removed from where they work. Of necessity these people have to use the suburban train services in order to get to their places of employment and to return home when the day’s work is done. Although places like, for instance, Bonteheuvel—a predominantly Coloured area—are not directly affected by the increased rail fares, it must be borne in mind that many Coloured workers have to use a bus service to places like Mowbray and Claremont, where they have to catch trains to reach their work in the city or places like Wynberg or Simonstown. In the result even those people are affected by the Minister’s proposals for increasing suburban fares. In addition, Sir, many Coloured workers living in places like Elsies River, Parow, Tiervlei, Bellville South, and others, have to use the railway services to travel between their work and their homes, and they will be hard hit, I suggest, by the substantial increases which the hon. the Minister adumbrated in his Budget speech. Many of these Coloured workers are struggling to maintain themselves and their families to-day, and I have not the slightest doubt, Sir, that these proposed increases will cause greater hardship to them. Therefore, Sir, bearing in mind that the wages of these people are pegged, and are likely to remain so for a long time because of Industrial Tribunal decisions, I would strongly urge the hon. the Minister to give further sympathetic consideration to reducing the proposed increases on these suburban lines. I feel, Sir, that the vast majority of Coloured users of the Railways will not be able to afford these increased fares. In view also of the fact that they earn pegged wages. I ask the hon. the Minister to reconsider his proposals, at any rate as far as the non-European section of our population is concerned, and as far as our second and third class fares are concerned. I do hope that the hon. the Minister will give this matter further consideration. It is a matter which is worthy of the most sympathetic consideration on the part of the Minister.

Now, Mr. Speaker, there is another matter which I want to raise with the hon. the Minister and which affects the non-White section of the new Cape Town railway station. I should like to preface my remarks in this connection by congratulating the hon. the Minister and his Department on presenting such a lovely building—which does Cape Town so much credit—to the mother city of South Africa. It is indeed a magnificent structure and does, as I say, do a great deal of credit to our city. But having said this, Mr. Speaker, I feel that the hon. the Minister must do something to alleviate the unfortunate conditions which obtain in the non-White section of the station. Many responsible Coloured people have asked me to raise this matter with the Government, and I am availing myself of this opportunity of doing so this afternoon. The hon. the Minister will appreciate, Mr. Speaker, that in order to gain access to the non-White platforms the Coloured people have to climb nearly 50 steps. Thirty-one steps lead from street level to the concourse of the station and a further 15 steps have to be climbed to reach the platforms at the end of a 100-yard ramp. This is the route which has to be followed by non-Whites in order to get to their trains. Now, no doubt the hon. the Minister will appreciate that there are many elderly, infirm and crippled Coloured people who have to catch trains at the new station after their day’s work has been done. They also have to negotiate this route in a reverse direction when they detrain on their way to their places of employment. This is the only means of transport which they have. The people I refer to have extreme difficulty in climbing all these steps. I have watched many of these unfortunate people struggling up these steps, some of them carrying parcels, some of them carrying children, and all of them intent on boarding their train as speedily as possible in order to avoid waiting for the next train. The conditions that prevail at the non-White station during peak hours are very bad indeed. I think the hon. the Minister’s Department will confirm what I am saying here this afternoon. A few days ago there appeared in The Cape Argus a statement made by one of the Coloured leaders in Cape Town, and he referred to the conditions existing at the non-White station during peak hours as representing a rugby scrum between the All Blacks and the Springboks. Well, I quite agree with this description. The conditions that prevail there during these periods are indeed incredibly bad. During these peak hours you have large numbers of people pushing about in an endeavour to reach their trains as soon as possible. It often happens that as a result people are knocked over by these large, heaving crowds. As a matter of fact, at times conditions are absolutely chaotic. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I feel that the hon. the Minister should give the most careful consideration to the installation of escalators in the non-White part of the station. These escalators should be supervised by European railway police so that the crowds can be controlled. I gather that the Kensington Management Committee has requested the Cape Town City Council to make representations to the Railways authorities for the installation of these escalators. A request has also been made that this matter must be dealt with as one of extreme urgency. This afternoon I publicly want to support these representations. I would urge the hon. the Minister to give his most sympathetic consideration to this appeal. Because, Sir, he would be doing the Coloured people an especially good turn, particularly those elderly men and women who use the new station.

I also wish to urge upon the Minister to ensure that many more railway police are on duty at the non-White section during peak hours. I am told that, quite apart from the chaotic conditions which are a daily occurrence, this section of the station is a haven for pick-pockets, thugs and the skolly elements among the Coloured people. Respectable—and elderly—Coloured men and women have found themselves the victims of pick-pockets and unprovoked assaults during these peak hours. I think it is absolutely essential that something should be done in order to protect these innocent people. Therefore, Sir, I consider it essential for additional railway police to be on duty during these peak hours, in order to control the crowds and to protect our citizens against these unruly elements among their own people.

I commend these matters to the hon. the Minister, and would urge him to give the most sympathetic consideration to what I have said.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Peninsula and the hon. member for Yeoville both raised the same question, i.e. how the increase in railway tariffs would affect the Coloureds—in the case of the hon. member for Peninsula—and the Bantu—in the case of the hon. member for Yeoville. What I find strange, however, is the fact that both these hon. members only told this House half the actual story. The hon. member for Yeoville criticized the hon. Minister for having increased third-class long-distance tariffs in respect of Bantu by 10 per cent, something which would supposedly hit the Bantu hard. But the hon. member neglected to mention that the corresponding tariffs for first- and second-class passengers had not been increased by 10 per cent but by 15 per cent. Third-class passengers are therefore being met. They are receiving a special concession. The hon. member for Peninsula complained because peri-urban third-class tariffs are being increased by 10 per cent. But people buying these tickets are being doubly accommodated, because first- and second-class tickets have gone up 20 per cent. Now, Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Yeoville is, in my opinion, not really so concerned about the Bantu. The hon. member let the cat out of the bag. He dragged the Bantu in because he wants to make propaganda for those outside. What the member is concerned about, is how the increased non-White long-distance tariffs will affect the mining industry. What the hon. member is really concerned about is the effect of these tariffs on the gold mines, the mining industries, the capitalistic industries. But now he holds the Bantu up to us.

Mr. Speaker, what this House must understand very well is that the increased tariffs will not eliminate the losses on passenger traffic. The increases will not even enable the hon. Minister to make the accounts tally. The raising of passenger tariffs will only help to decrease the tremendous loss of R50,000,000 suffered annually on this kind of traffic by a little more than R7,000,000. Passenger tariffs had to be raised because it is not fair that it should only be the other railway users who have to bear the tremendous loss on passenger traffic each time. In passing I would just like to mention the following here. The hon. member for Yeoville and the hon. member for Peninsula can perhaps go and do a little proselytisation amongst the people whom they mostly represent here. Is it not perhaps time that employers follow the example of the Railways and pay a portion of their employees’ travelling expenses to and from work? I am offering this suggestion, and if the hon. members were to go into the matter they could perhaps do something constructive about it.

When the hon. Minister draws up his Budget there are a few basic factors which he has to take into account. In the first place he has to remember that the Railways must be run on a business basis. In other words, the Administration must make its books tally. It cannot go to the Treasury for subsidies whenever it finds itself in financial distress. The second aspect which he must bear in mind is that the Railways is in the service of South Africa and of the economic life of South Africa. It affects the entire economic structure. The entire national economy is built on this national transport system. The producer, the dealer, the industrialist and the agriculturist all rely on this transport sector, i.e. that the Railways will render the services, the basic services. For if they did not have the assurance that they could rely on those basic transport services, none of them could develop to the maximum of their potential. The Railways is therefore expected to undertake this basic traffic of the country whether or not it is a paying proposition. The Railways cannot curtail or regulate its activities at will in order to adjust them to its income. The Railways cannot curtail or suspend the essential economic services. It must continue them. I want to mention a few examples. An ordinary business man will, whenever he encounters problems in making his books tally, i.e. when he has balance of payment problems, will have to give his immediate attention to a number of things. In the first place, he will attempt to economize. As far as the Railways is concerned, this aspect has been dealt adequately with. During recent years the Railways has concentrated more than ever on this aspect of economizing. In the second place, he will have to aim at increased productivity. And here in this House it has been testified to time and again that in recent years the Railways has succeeded in maintaining a tremendously high productivity and has succeeded in utilizing to the best of its ability the resources at its disposal. The third thing which such a person will do, when he has to contend with balance of payment difficulties, will be either to curtail or eliminate uneconomic services. And it is precisely here where the problem lies as far as the Railways is concerned. With the implementation of the Schumann Commission’s report with regard to tariffs, the Minister of Transport is going as far as he can. And that is a big step forward. But, Mr. Speaker, we are encountering innumerable difficulties in this direction. How far can the Railways go if it is expected to maintain the basic national transport services? I want to mention three examples. The first is in connection with passenger transport. This section of the service is at present operating at the colossal loss of approximately R50,000,000 per year. But, Mr. Speaker, the Railways cannot suspend these services and it cannot curtail them. On the contrary, it must expand its services in the face of these continually increasing losses. Each year it must order more passenger vehicles, purchase more electric locomotives, invest more capital, and does so, only to meet with greater losses. It has no option. It must do so. Another example I want to mention is the bulk transport which the Railways is called upon to undertake. Take for example coal which comprises more than 30 per cent of the total transport undertaken by the Railways, and ores which comprises more than 10 per cent of the total transport. These articles fall under low-tariff traffic. It is in many respects uneconomic. In this way the Railways has been transporting coal to Cape Town for many years at a loss of R1.7 million per annum. And it is not this class of transport which decreases. Low-tariff traffic has not decreased in recent years. While the tempo and growth of high-tariff traffic has decreased in recent years by 7 per cent it decreased by .4 per cent in the case of low-tariff traffic. Low-tariff traffic is therefore increasing. It is on this type of traffic that the Railways suffer losses. It cannot suspend these services. Because coal and ore are the basic minerals on which our economic industries are built up, the Railways must, in spite of these losses, continue to invest more money in new railway lines, rolling stock and modern resources, so as in this way to make provision for the ever-growing demand for the transportation of this type of low-tariff traffic. It is compelled to do so by the country and as a result of the economic development of South Africa, since no one else is interested in it. I want to mention a further case. I want to mention the high burden of interest which swallows up such a major part of Railway revenue each year. The interest-bearing capital invested in the Railways at present amounts to the colossal total of R2,000,000,000. The interest on this capital investment must be defrayed from revenue annually. If we were to look at the latest Brown Book, we would find that large amounts, i.e. R80,000,000 last year and R64,000,000 this year, were spent for the very purpose of purchasing rolling stock and for the construction of new railway lines. This capital expansion is essential, not in order to transport traffic profitably, but in order to transport this uneconomic traffic. The capital expansion is necessary in order to continue carrying the loss of R50,000,000 on passenger services and in order to provide our industries with ore and coal. Nothing can be done about this. The Railways must continue to do so in spite of these losses. Year after year greater capital investment is necessary and obviously the burden of interest increases proportionately. This is a difficult matter. It is a matter which ought to receive attention. The Opposition has been pleading for many years in this House that it is high time that an interest redemption fund be established. As a matter of fact this is a matter which, in my opinion, can be considered. It is a mater which has possible merit. But where must the money be obtained from in order to establish such a fund? The hon. members know that if the tariffs are not increased, the funds cannot be made available. The hon. members have now come forward with something which is contrary to that which they made propaganda for in the past, and they now want to demolish the only reserve fund the Railways has. This fund must now be made bankrupt. They speak comfortably about the establishment of funds, but when it comes to the point they want to bankrupt the funds which the Railways has at its disposal.

I want to dwell for a moment on the United Party’s criticism of the fact that the hon. the Minister did not cover the deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund. In the first place members pointed out that the hon. the Minister should not have recovered the deficit from the railway user, but that he should have covered it out of the Rates Equalization Fund. This was mentioned inter alia by the hon. member for Parktown. That would have been very unfair because those people had been building up the fund in recent years with the tariffs which they paid. And what astonished me to-day, Mr. Speaker, is the fact that I heard only one side of the story from these hon. members. They only pointed out how unfair it was to the railway user who had to pay the tarriffs. They stated that it was unfair in a time of increased tariffs and a time which, according to them, was a critical one, to tax the railway users even further instead of using the money which had been put aside for that purpose over the past years in order to prevent the tariff curve from rising. However, the other side of the story, something for which they have made such earnest pleas over the years and which they were so concerned about, was never mentioned. What the hon. member had said was that a tremendously strong Rates Equalization Fund was essential, and that that fund should be worth at least R60,000,000. At the moment there is only R40,000,000 in the fund, and now the hon. members want to make the fund bankrupt. The hon. members had not wanted the fund to be strong in order to accommodate the users and keep the tariffs low. No, their argument was precisely that they were concerned about the railwayman. They said that this fund was actually the guarantee for the Railway’s staff, so that if difficult times were encountered—times in which the Minister had deficits which he could not recover with the tariffs—the railwayman could then be safeguarded against a decrease in his salary. In this respect the National Party agreed with the United Party. Both were convinced that there should be a substantial and a strong fund. The United Party criticized the hon. member very severely when the fund became appreciably weaker. Now the United Party is no longer concerned about the railwayman. Now they are no longer concerned about the future of the railwayman and his family. Now they are no longer concerned about what could happen next year if it were to be another bad year. The election is something of the past. Now these hon. members, who were so concerned about the railwayman and tried so hard to catch the votes of the railwaymen before the election, are no longer concerned about the fate of the railwayman. Now they want to leave him in the lurch and threaten his future. They now want to strip him and deprive him of the only guarantee which exists for the railwayman that his salary will not be affected in difficult and unforeseeable times. That is typical of the kind of behaviour which we have been experiencing all these years from that side of the House. At certain times they embrace the railwayman, and at other times they stand far away from him. Only the other day the hon. member for Yeoville told the hon. the Minister sneeringly and in a reproachful tone of voice that he had increased the railwayman’s salary just before the election. Last year the hon. members on the opposite side pleaded for those salary increases, but they did not have the courage then to say what they are saying now. But now that the election is a thing of the past, they are no longer concerned about the railwayman. Out of the courage of its innermost convictions the Government granted those salary increases with the result that a liability of R33,000,000 has to be met. The only way to cover that liability was to increase the tariffs. But what strikes me most is the fact that the hon. members on the opposite side, who have always posed as the friend of the railwayman, have now left him in the lurch. The hon. members are no longer concerned about the railwayman. The hon. member for Yeoville and his friends are now concerned about how these tariffs would affect the profits of certain business interests, such as the Chamber of Mines for example. Where are those brave heroes of the word now? How are the hon. members on the opposite side going to make the books balance if they stripped the Rates Equalization Fund of the R40,000,000 in order to cover the deficit, and next year happened to be another bad year? [Interjections.] The one argument of hon. members opposite is therefore that the Government should have covered the present deficit out of the Rates Equalization Fund. The other argument is that the hon. the Minister should have taken more heed in the past of what the Opposition had to say. If the hon. the Minister had listened to the Opposition, in what position would we have found ourselves to-day as far as Railway finances are concerned? Two years ago the hon. members wanted the hon. the Minister to grant salary increases. The hon. member for Durban Point will not deny that. If the hon. the Minister had not taken preventative measures at that time and resisted the pressure on the part of the Railway staff, if he had acted on the advice of the Opposition, then the hon. the Minister would already have had to meet an additional expenditure of R33,000,000 per annum over the past two years. And if the hon. the Minister, in terms of the proposals from the members on the opposite side of the House, had taken that R66,000,000 out of the Rates Equalization Fund, what would have remained of the R55,000,000 which was in that fund? And what would the position have been to-night? There would then have been nothing in the fund at this stage to cover the deficit of R13,500,000 from the previous year. Neither would the Railways then have been able to grant the salary increases which they did grant to railway workers, last year, because the hon. the Minister would then already have had to increase tariffs in 1964. If the Government had listened to the Opposition and had already incurred additional liabilities of R33,000,000 per year two years ago what would the Railways’ position have been today? The hon. the Minister warned the Opposition that, if salaries were increased, the tariffs would increase. At the beginning of last year the hon. the Minister said—

According to certain remarks he subsequently made, the hon. member for Yeoville implied that he was not so dense, and that he realized that, if salary increases were to take place, the only alternative would then have been to increase the tariffs. With his advice the hon. member is really a Job’s comforter. In 1964 the hon. the Minister introduced a budget which indicated a surplus of R20,000,000. The hon. member for Yeoville then stood up and said that he was surprised that the hon. the Minister was not decreasing the tariffs. In the second place he said that the hon. the Minister was proceeding with a budget which would take infinitely more out of the user’s pockets than was necessary—the same old story which he has been recounting since as far back as 1959, when he said here that the Minister of Finance was overtaxing the public each year to an amount of £50,000,000 per annum, particularly in order to meet the Railway’s capital requirements. He said the hon. the Minister should have decreased the tariffs. In the second place he said that the hon. the Minister had taken too much money out of the user’s pockets and he then proceeded to say that the hon. the Minister is over cautious and that he had no faith in the future. Sir, if the hon. the Minister had at that time listened to the hon. member, if the hon. the Minister had not been so conservative and not acted so carefully and had not taken that surplus and raised the Rates Equalization Fund to where it stands at present, if the hon. the Minister had listened to the hon. member for Yeoville and had decreased the tariffs at that stage, what would have been the position of Railway finances to-day? We would not then have found ourselves here to-night with a estimated deficit of R40,000,000, but with an estimated deficit of between R80,000 and R100,000,000 perhaps, for where would the revenue have come from in the meantime? But the hon. member for Yeoville went even further. He never stops when he has gone far enough; he always goes a little too far. He proceeded with his tale of woe and said to the hon. the Minister: “Is there no hope for the private conveyors; is there no hope that they will be relieved of the monopolistic grip which the Railways has on South Africa?” What else does that imply but that he was at that stage asking the hon. the Minister to allow that more of that small percentage of high-tariff traffic—17 per cent of the total—on which the Railways is so dependent, be diverted to the private road conveyors? We must see this matter in the correct perspective. I want to dwell for a moment on the hon. members opposite as the mouthpiece over the years for the Road Federation. All these years they have been asserting in this House that the hon. the Minister is allowing an injustice to be done to the private road conveyors, and they brought forward two arguments: The first was that the hon. the Minister was investing too much capital in the Railways and as a result of that was merely increasing the tremendous burden of debt unnecessarily. The hon. the Minister’s defence to that was quite rightly that, even if he were to make concessions to road conveyors, it would not influence the investment of capital in the Railways, because the normal road conveyor was not interested in the basic transport for which large amounts are being invested in the Railways. The normal road conveyor is not interested in the transportation of ore and uneconomic transport. Normal road conveyors are not interested in conveying passengers at a loss; they are not interested in transporting ore and coal. No. they are interested in transporting the high-tariff traffic, they want to skim off the cream of the traffic, and hon. members on that side of the House have encouraged them in the wrong and pleaded that the hon. the Minister should make concessions in that direction. The second argument in this regard was that the hon. the Minister was engaged in building up a tremendous monopoly in respect of the Railway system in South Africa. Now, this argument is dealt with thoroughly by the Schumann Commission in its report. In paragraph 29 of the commission’s report it is stated: “A pure monopoly which is free in all respects to lay down its price policy at will”—as the hon. member for Yeoville tried to make the House believe again to-day—“no longer exists to-day.” But what the commission’s report states further, in paragraph 31, is that protection of the Railways against competition is essential. [Time limit.]

Sir, when you listen to the hon. member for Parow defending the Minister’s increase in tariffs and fares, it makes you wonder just where we are going to. At one stage he suggested that employers should meet the higher fares that will have to be paid by their workers. He went on to criticize speakers on this side of the House for suggesting that the hon. the Minister might have made more use of he Rates Equalization Fund to meet his losses over the year. Throughout his speech he set out to defend the Minister in the predicament in which he finds himself at the present moment. The hon. member for Parow also showed a terrific lack of confidence in the future of this country. Sir, I do not know whether hon. members on the Government side expect the credit squeeze to go on indefinitely; whether they expect things to get worse, but it is clear from the tone of the hon. member’s speech that he thinks it would be wrong “in this critical period” to make the Rates Equalization Fund bankrupt. I think he used the word “critical period”. As I say, he showed a complete lack of confidence in the future of this country.

You understood very little of what I said.

I would like to refer to the hon. member for Bethlehem and congratulate him on his maiden speech as leader in the railway debate for the Nationalist Party. He had a difficult task in trying to answer the criticism of the hon. member for Yeoville of the Budget introduced by the hon. the Minister. We congratulate him on his efforts and we hope he is going to be very happy in his new job as chairman of the Select Committee.

If I may turn now to his predecessor, I would like to congratulate him on his maiden speech as Deputy Minister. We know that he is intensely interested in Railway matters, facts and figures, which he produced here again today. He produced numbers of figures to show what effect the increased rates introduced by the Minister will have on various commodities. Sir, I think the hon. member for Parktown put that whole question in its proper perspective. I think the hon. the Deputy Minister based his figures on prices charged in the shops to-day. I do not know where he got his facts and figures but we all know that facts and figures are sometimes known to lie. I think the hon. member for Parktown put the whole matter in its proper perspective and showed that costs will rise considerably higher than hon. members opposite think.

The hon. the Deputy Minister also told us that the whole Budget was based on the recommendations of the Schumann Commission. He did admit towards the end of his speech that living costs will rise as a result of the increased rates and fares, and that is precisely what the hon. member for Yeoville said. The general impression that the other side sought to create is that living costs will not rise a6 a result of the increased rates. As a matter of fact, the hon. the Minister in his Budget speech referred to the matter and said that he hoped that the Minister of Economic Affairs would take note of the position.

Sir, I would like to refer to the remarks made by the hon. member for Peninsula with reference to the Cape Town railway station which falls within my constituency. This particular station building is a very fine building. I think the only complaint everyone has is that it has taken quite a long time to build and it seems to be like the house that Jack built; it goes on and on, and we hope one day to see the new station building completed and the old building pulled down and the site cleared. I agree with the hon. member for Peninsula that the absence of escalators makes it very difficult for passengers, not only for Coloured passengers, but White passengers as well to go up and down the stairs. That is the position not only at the Cape Town station but all over the country. I think this is a matter to which the Minister might give some attention.

To come to the hon. Minister, we have had the Minister here now for quite a while. This is my second session in this House, and I have always had the impression that the hon. the Minister lacks confidence in the country. As you know, Sir, when he took over this particular job he said he would stake his political career on making a success of it. Whenever he gets into a tight spot he naturally acts and sometimes he acts rather dramatically and to the detriment of the country. Sir, we heard the hon. the Minister here in the short session before the election when he introduced his Part Appropriation Bill. We then heard a different Minister, a Minister with confidence in the future, although he told us that traffic had dropped in comparison with the 1964 figure. He told us that in the latter part of 1965 it had dropped still lower, but he said that this was as a result of the measures taken to curb inflation. He also told us about the increased wages and salaries that he had to pay to the staff. We all appreciate that he had to increase wages. As the hon. member for Parow has said, we continually press the Minister for better conditions for the Railway staff; we admit that. We did hammer the Minister. We hammered him on many occasions in regard to the working conditions of the staff, and we take it that whatever the railwaymen have been given, they have been given as a result of the efforts by this side. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Parow said that. Sir, we do not abandon the railwaymen we accept our responsibilities and carry them out. Sir, when the hon. the Minister presented his Part Appropriation he knew the difficulties that were facing him. He was not able to predict the shortfall that he would have at the end of March of this year but we know now that the adjusted shortfall is R13,900,000, which is being met from the Rates Equalization Fund, leaving him with about R31,000,000 in the Fund. We realized at the time when the Minister introduced his Part Appropriation that he was making a pre-election speech. As a matter of fact he gave us the history of the Railways over the last 17 years so that hon. members on his side could use that information on the election platforms and tell the voters what the Railways had done for the country. Our attitude was a more responsible one. We pointed out the inflationary tendencies to him and we asked him to do something about it. Nothing was done, as we know. Unfortunately the Minister fell into the trap of the mishandling of the boom by the Government. I would like to tell the hon. the Minister that as a former railwayman he should have seen the red light and taken the necessary precautions. He did not do so. He should have taken the country into his confidence and told us what the position was. Sir, what does he do? He comes along and tells us that in principle he has accepted the recommendations contained in the Schumann Commission’s report, which has been with him since the 10th April, 1964. Surely he could have acted upon that report before the election but he waited until after the election before taking action as far as rates are concerned. It is quite evident that the Minister held back the implementation of the recommendations contained in this report until after the election. He knew that if he had got up in this House before the election and told the public the story that he told them in his Budget speech the possibilities are that we might have been sitting on that side and hon. members opposite on this side.

You must be Alice in Wonderland.

No, that could have happened. I think if the Minister had made the speech earlier this year which he made a few days ago there might have been a complete change in the views of the electorate.

Sir, the hon. the Minister is a man who acts; he does not want it said of him that he is a failure. What did he do in 1962? In 1962 the Schumann Commission was sitting. The Minister found that he had to give the employees in the Railway service more money, as a direct result of pressure from this side. He said that he would not be able to balance his Budget and that he would have a shortfall of something like R21,000,000, so what did he do? He simply slapped on a blanket 10 per cent on all rates. He found afterwards that he had to make adjustments to the various users of the railways, in response to representations, because this addition of 10 per cent was imposed indiscriminately. We are disappointed to find that the Schumann Commission does not recommend a rates examination board. It is a pity that it was not recommended in this particular report. If there had been a rates examination board the Minister would not have found himself in the difficulty in which he was in 1962. Sir, I do not think the Minister could have picked a worse time to introduce the present increases in the rates. The Government is calling upon everybody to save as much as possible and to stop buying, and now we find that the Minister comes along and pushes up prices.

We now come to the suburban passenger, the person who will be largely affected by this new Budget, who will have to pay an increase of 20 per cent on his fare. The Schumann Commission recommended that the increase in fares should be spread over a period of ten years, but the Minister has decided to have one bite at the cherry and to put fares up by 20 per cent in one fell swoop. Sir, things have changed in South Africa. Here in the Cape you find that towns like Stellenbosch, Paarl, Wellington, the Strand and Somerset West and places as far afield as Simonstown have all become dormitory towns of the city of Cape Town and numbers of people use the railways to come into Cape Town.

Those are the people who will be affected by this steep rise. The Deputy Minister quoted figures of bus fares as compared with railway fares. I am not convinced by that argument, because we know the Railways are there to serve the users and not to make profits as bus companies do in the Cape. It is not only the husband and wife who have to come into town, but the school children also. One wonders whether the Minister, with this untimely increase of passenger fares, is not forcing the average suburban traveller away from the train service and into lift clubs or into using his own car. We know of the congestion on the roads to-day and the very high accident rate we have in this country. Surely the Minister should have taken these things into consideration before putting up his fares. His policy should be to encourage the traveller to use the suburban trains more than he does at present. We should like to see parking lots at every station so that you can park your car at the station and use the train. That would keep cars off the roads. As Minister of Transport he knows that the roads cost millions to build and much money can be saved if he could get some of these people off the roads.

The point about privileged tickets has been made by the hon. member for Pinetown and I agree with him that these privileged tickets are a fringe benefit to the Railway worker and should not be charged to passenger account. They should be charged to the wage account of these particular workers. When the Minister negotiates at new agreement with the Railway workers, the fringe benefits they receive in the way of privileged tickets is used as a bargaining point. It is part of their salary and their conditions of service. So it is all wrong that these fringe benefits should be charged to the passenger account. It is said that the suburban railway runs at a loss, but very few railway transport systems are run at a profit. The one in Cape Town runs at a profit, but I think that is the only one in the country. If the Minister wants to run the Railway passenger service at a profit or to meet expenses then, as the Schumann Commission recommends, he should apply to the Consolidated Revenue Fund to make up the loss. But I think the railway user should have the benefit of being provided with an economical service.

I want to come to the Western Cape. We here are a long distance away from the coalfields and from the natural markets of this country, and whenever there is a rise in the tariffs we in the Western Cape are hit very badly. It has been said that there are some products produced in the Western Cape which cost more to rail to the Rand than the cost of their production, and that is quite true. At the time the 10 per cent was put on by the Minister, it hit local industry very hard, and it is possible that the Western Cape lost a lot of potential industry on account of the high rates levied to our natural markets on the Rand. It has been suggested that the cost of coal would rise by about 5 per cent per ton from the pithead to the power station. That, of course, will have to be passed on to the consumer, whether he is a house-owner or a factory-owner. The Minister will have to pay for the electricity he gets from Escom and it may make a dent in his budget. Then there is the petrol user, the motorist, who will have to pay more for his petrol. The coastal ports will not be affected, but inland you will have to pay more for petrol. I think the Minister hopes that industry will absorb this extra cost, but that is a matter of negotiation and I do not think so. I think the motorist will have to pay more to keep his car going. All these increased costs, notwithstanding the Minister’s warning to industry, will be passed on, and that will step up inflation. We will all suffer as the result. I would like to say to the Minister that before he decided to push up rates and fares he should have had a little more confidence in the country’s recovery. The Minister of Economic Affairs relaxed import control and we hope that the Minister will earn more by way of high-rated traffic. I want to make a plea for the Western Cape. The Western Cape does not have the benefits of the cheap port rates enjoyed by Port Elizabeth and East London, and the Western Cape suffers not only because it is a long way away from the market, but it also suffers ideologically as the result of the restrictions in regard to labour. Industry here suffers. Industry here is in fact a border industry. The Minister of Coloured Affairs is not here, but we are going to have the largest concentration of Coloureds here that we have anywhere in South Africa, and the Minister of Coloured Affairs has told us in the past that he is going to build up the Coloured community. Industries will go up and I think we in the Western Cape are entitled to some concessions in regard to railway rates to encourage factories to start up here, in order to employ these people. There are many people dependent on industry in the Western Cape, and while rates rise it has the effect on a keen market that it will pay a factory rather to establish itself nearer the Rand or in the border areas, but certainly not in the Cape. I want to ask the Minister to give the matter some consideration and to see whether he cannot give the Western Cape some relief in regard to rates. I know that plea is also made for the dying mines, but I think the Western Cape has a case here and it is a matter which should be examined. The Government is in favour of the decentralization of industry. I am sure the Minister would not like to see industry here dry up as the result of the heavy rates.

Another point I wish to put to the Minister is one which is worrying many Railway employees, and that is the discipline on the Railways and the method of control. I have had quite a number of cases where members of the Railway staff have been disciplined. They have gone through the usual routine and their cases have gone to apeal and their appeals have been rejected. I accept that you have to have discipline on the Railways, but in some of these cases I feel that under different circumstances these people would be given another chance. The evidence that goes to the Railway Board is documentary evidence. I accept the fact that the cases are investigated to the best of everybody’s ability and that there is no bias, but it does happen that lower down the line you get a petty official who has to apply these regulations but it becomes absurd when a person on the Railways is booked because he is one minute late for work. There are many members of the Railways who are reluctant to complain. I have spoken to senior officials and I have no doubt that everything is done at the top of the tree and the regulations are carried out, but there is that something missing. I feel that a person whose appeal has been rejected should have some other remedy. If a man is penalized for a petty infringement and the case goes to appeal and it is found that he should not have been charged originally, nothing can be done about it because a decision has already been taken and because the decision of the Board is final. The Minister sits as Chairman of that Board and they examine the evidence in every possible way. but I feel that the Minister should have the whole disciplinary set-up thoroughly examined. I should like to see a commission examining it, because it is causing serious dissension among the railwaymen. Many good and faithful workers resign through frustration because of these petty pinpricks they have to put up with. I think the matter should be adjusted and I leave it to the Minister.

The hon. member for Salt River made various statements but my time is very limited and I will not have the opportunity of replying to all of them. The hon. member referred to salary increases and was presumptuous enough, as his party usually is, to assert that salary increases are always effected as a result of the Opposition’s pleas. Nothing is further removed from the truth than this assertion. Every railwayman knows that there is only one party, the National Party, that has been the fiend of the railway worker in the past, that is his friend at the moment, and that will remain his friend in the future. The hon. member also referred to the exercising of discipline and objected to the fact that some disciplinary officials allegedly imposed too severe penalties. He spoke about the “pinpricks”. I myself have a very large railway constituency and I hear a great deal about disciplinary matters and about the penalties imposed. The hon. member ought to know that any person in the railway service who is dissatisfied about the penalty imposed by a disciplinary official may appeal against it. He may appeal to the system manager and if he is still dissatisfied he may appeal to the general manager, and if he is still not satisfied he may appeal to the Railway Board. It has been my experience that the disciplinary officials always take the particular circumstances into consideration and that they always act humanely.

The hon. member also referred to the Schumann Commission. I shall come back to that in my speech. It is very interesting to bear in mind speeches of hon. Opposition members at the beginning of the year during the debate on the Railways and Harbours Part Appropriation Bill and to compare that with their latest speeches. As regards quality, there is no difference; it is equally poor, but I want to pay attention to the approach. The hon. member for Parow pointed out just now, how, prior to the election. Opposition members placed a great deal of emphasis on the case of the railway official. That was during the Part Appropriation debate. During the debate on the Railways and Harbours Part Appropriation Bill at the beginning of the year the Opposition wailed about railway servants, about the conditions under which they were working and about the dissatisfaction which there allegedly was in their midst. The hon. member for Yeoville said on that occasion that if the Minister were to become an ordinary citizen and mingle with the railway workers he would have learned how “things were seething amongst many people”. He also spoke about the increasing hardships suffered by the staff. He spoke about the many injustices under which the staff was labouring. He also spoke about the overtime railwaymen were forced to work. Anybody who listened to that debate would have thought that the National Party was done for, because no railwayman would ever again vote for it, and it would never again be victorious in any constituency in which railwaymen formed a high percentage of the electorate. On that occasion I issued a challenge to the United Party to put a candidate in one of the large railway constituencies, Koedoespoort, but they did not have the moral courage to do so. We waited until nomination day and there was no candidate. But they do not have much of a political conscience. They supported the so-called republican candidate there and 500 of them voted for him. That only goes to show how flexible the political conscience of the United Party is, because the previous time, in 1961, they voted for the Progressive Party’s candidate.

Order!

I will not take that any further. I only want to show that the United Party has a very flexible conscience also when discussing the affairs of the railwayman.

On a number of occasions during the debate this afternoon reference was made to the Schumann Commission’s Report, certain recommendations of which have been adapted on a selective basis. I should now like to refer to what hon. members opposite said about the Report of the Schumann Commission on previous occasions. On 3rd March, 1965, the hon. member for Yeoville referred to that and said that Parliament did not know what the Minister intended doing about those “very important recommendations”. That implied that that report contained many things to which the Minister could react. On 8th March the hon. member referred to that once more and asked the Minister—

In particular I want to draw hon. members’ attention to the final words of this quotation. The position is that the Railways have to recover their losses from somewhere, and that is the reason for that attitude which the hon. the Minister had to adopt. I also want to refer to what another important participant in railway debates has said about this matter. I am referring to the former member for Turffontein, Mr. Durrant. On 9th March, 1965, he said that the problems in connection with staff and in connection with capital expenditure were all problems caused, as far as the Railways was concerned by, as was so graphically pointed out in the Schumann Report, the low-rated traffic which was uneconomic. He also said that it was the recommendations of the Schumann Commission which ultimately convinced the Minister that, as he put it, the standpoint adopted by the United Party for a number of years, was the correct one. That is what the then member for Turffontein said. That is sheer praise for the Schumann Report. In addition they naturally made the presumptuous allegation that it agreed with the standpoint they adopted. Mr. Durrant continued by saying that it was the cold, stark facts of the Schumann Report which convinced the Minister that the time had arrived for a new approach. Now the Minister comes along with this new approach and moves in the direction of selective adaptation with a view to closing the gap between high-rated and low-rated traffic.

I have looked up what the various newspapers said beforehand in connection with the Budget which the hon. the Minister of Transport presented last Wednesday. I have found that all responsible Afrikaans newspapers predicted that the Minister would follow this course. In a leading article appearing in Dagbreek en Sondagnuus of 7th August the following was said [translation]—

The article then refers to the Schumann Commission and states in conclusion that a more realistic and better adjusted tariff structure can therefore be expected. I am quoting from what has been said by persons of whom it can be said that they have knowledge of railway matters. As it happened they predicted the position correctly.

The attack which has been made on the hon. the Minister and on the Government as a result of this increase in tariffs has been, in as far as I can judge, a subtle and veiled attack on the increase in the salaries of railway officials which was granted last year, because if those salary increases had not been granted, there would not have been a deficit.

The hon. member for Yeoville also raised another point of which cognizance should be taken. He argued that the Administration should aim at greater efficiency and productivity. I think the words he used were that the Administration should try “to get greater efficiency from the staff.” To me this is not only an accusation against the Administration but also against the railway worker. Bear in mind that the railway workers are the people for whom hon. members opposite always profess to be pleading. They are the people for whom they profess they have obtained an increase in salaries through their constant efforts. But now they come along here and make a veiled and subtle attack on the railwaymen. But we know that the Administration is doing everything in its power to increase the competence and productivity of the railwayman. As a matter of fact, the attitude of the railwayman himself is that he wants to become more competent. In this connection I want to refer to the Railway College at Esselen Park. This college may rightly be called “the university of the Railways”. This year, as it happens, marks the 21st year of the existence of this college. In the past I have often mentioned the good work being done by the principal oif the college, Mr. Lyell, and the staff. Now it is a great pleasure for me to congratulate them on the 21st anniversary of the college. The principal has been there for 21 years; that is to say he started the college, and can therefore correctly be called the father of that institution. During these 21 years approximately 50,000 trainees have passed through his hands. We are grateful that we are able to say that so many railway officials have made use of the opportunity to better themselves which the college affords. The college is an institution where trainees and other officials do not only receive training, but education as well.

Mr. Speaker, I do not intend competing with the hon. member for Koedoespoort for the title “the railwayman’s best friend”. The best part of his speech was devoted to an endeavour to show that any crititism of the Minister’s Budget was aimed in a somewhat subtle manner at the pay increases which were granted recently to railwaymen. To him and to the hon. member for Parow, who also spoke in this vein earlier this afternoon, I want to say that these increases granted to the railwaymen are not going to mean much for them as a result of the inflationary tendencies inherent in the hon. the Minister’s Budget. It is clear that all these increases in the tariffs will have to be passed on to the consumer and eventually the inflationary spiral is going to overtake the increases the staff received.

I also want to point out to the hon. member for Parow that the concern over the effects of these increases on the mines and on secondary industry is more than just a concern for the capitalistic employers in this country. Let me say that I am always interested to see how easily hon. members opposite change from being upholders of the capitalist system of our economy to being the worker’s friends and taking a distinctly socialistic line in attacking employers of labour. This was the line which was taken quite noticeably by the hon. member for Parow. It is not a question, Sir, of defending the interests of the capitalist per se. Rather, it is a question of looking at the deeper economic implications of the increases in tariffs. There is no doubt that some of our industries are going to be very hard hit indeed. The most hard hit will, of course, be the mining industry of this country. I need hardly stress that despite the increase in secondary industry in South Africa and the increase in our exports of manufactured goods, it is still our mining, and gold mining in particular, that earns us a great percentage of our foreign exchange. And yet the mines are constantly being faced with rising costs as against a fixed price for their product. Therefore we are going to have more marginal mines going out of existence if there is any steep increase in the cost structure of the mining industry. One of the first industries to be hit and to be hit the hardest by changes of this nature is the mining industry on account of the extent to which they have to use the Railways for their supply of food, stores, fuel, equipment and other basic essentials. So one can be rightly concerned about this narrowing gap between the cost structure on the one hand and the productive ability of the mines, in particular of marginal mines, on the other hand.

Another important point I want to discuss is this increase in passenger fares. The hon. member for Parow mentioned that the increase in the case of first and second class passengers was higher than in the case of third class passengers. In this connection I have to point out that the lower the income of a worker, the higher the percentage that goes into the cost of transport. Transport costs are one of the five items playing the major role in a poverty datum budget. The others are rent, food, fuel and essential clothing. It is accepted by social workers that the lower the income of a worker the higher the percentage of that income must he spend on transport. In the case of the African worker this percentage has been worked out as being 16 per cent. In other words, 16 per cent of the income of the average urban African worker is taken up by the costs of transport. This is a very high percentage indeed, and it leaves very little over for the other four essential items in a poverty datum budget. Thus it is a particularly heavy burden for the African worker in urban areas, a worker who, already, is living below the bread line, to have to bear in future an increase in his railway fares.

Do you realize that fares to the Bantu locations are not going to be increased?

The hon. the Minister used the term “resettlement area”, Sir. What does the Minister mean by this term? Does he include Soweto …

No increase of fares will, for example, take place on the line between Johannesburg and Orlando and Johannesburg and Soweto. Those fares are not being increased.

Are all those areas considered as resettlement areas?

Fares on those subsidized lines will not be increased. Ninety per cent of the Bantu workers make use of those lines in their daily work.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. the Minister did not say “subsidized”. He used the term “resettlement”.

I honestly thought those fares were also to be increased.

Order!

The fares on the guaranteed lines will not be raised.

Well, I am very relieved to hear the hon. the Minister say this.

Had you listened to my Budget speech you would not have been under a misapprehension.

I was here, Sir, and I listened to the hon. the Minister, and he used a term which is not generally understood. I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but the fault is the hon. the Minister’s. A resettlement area is considered to be an area in which people are settled after having been moved from somewhere else. Now. the only such area which I know of in Johannesburg is Sophiatown, and I could quite easily understand, therefore, that perhaps increased fares would not apply to trips to and from Meadowlands, which is a resettlement area housing people who were compulsorily removed by the Government from Sophiatown and resettled in Meadowlands.

Fares will not be increased on those lines subsidized by the Treasury and which are guaranteed against losses.

Well, Sir, I am delighted to hear it, but I say again that the hon. the Minister must use terms that are generally understood.

I have no control over your intelligence, you know.

Mr. Speaker, people have been living in Johannesburg townships since time immemorial. Where have they been resettled from, may I ask? I must say I did take it to mean Langa and Nyanga in the Western Cape, where many Bantu have been resettled. But people living in Orlando have in many instances been living there since 1920, since that area was laid out as a township. Thus it cannot be said to be a resettlement area at all. It is an area which has grown up as part of the Johannesburg municipal area. But I am delighted to find out that I was mistaken, Mr. Speaker, because there is no doubt about it that the doubled lines between Soweto and Johannesburg carry the vast majority of the industrial working population of Johannesburg. Indeed, as many as 190,000 commuters are carried daily on those lines. I will have more to say about this point once the hon. the Minister has verified that he in fact used the right term. I hope the hon. the Minister does not discover that in fact he did not mean that. I trust I can take it as settled now and that there is no question about the fact that all commuters, the 190,000 …

I spoke about all the guaranteed lines.

What does that mean?

Those lines are guaranteed by Treasury. Those Bills have been before Parliament and the relevant amounts appear on my Estimates for Transport. You should know all these things.

No, I did not know, but the hon. the Minister should know that “resettlement” is not a term which is generally understood to mean that.

All the guaranteed lines.

Well, I am glad to hear that. Of course. Africans do use other lines as well. In the light of the Minister’s remarks, the argument I used before is, however, not quite as pressing. Nevertheless, the increased fares are a heavy burden for these people to carry, because they are, after all, the lowest income people in the country.

Mr. Speaker, I want to get on to the Johannesburg-Soweto business and the question of accidents on these lines and also in the other urban areas. Some days ago I put a question to the hon. the Minister about the incidence of accidents, and it transpires that some ten accidents have occurred between the 1st July, 1963, and the time of putting my question. Six of these accidents occurred on lines which are heavily used between the townships and the urban areas proper, such as Johannesburg Soweto townships line and Kwa-Mashu-Durban line. In these ten accidents 129 people were killed and 156 were seriously injured. Many more were injured to a lesser extent. I know, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. the Minister is concerned about these accidents, and I know that these accidents have been and are the subjects of departmental inquiries. But, Sir, I think we require something more now than a departmental inquiry. I think the whole question of the number of accidents which have occurred on very heavily-used lines must now be subjected to a proper full-scale commission of inquiry. I believe that over-crowding is one of the most important causes.

No, it is not one of the causes.

The hon. the Minister denies that. Well, I wonder whether he has ever bothered to go down to Johannesburg during peak hours and looked at those non-White trains as they leave the station. He would be horrified. I am sure, to see people clinging like flies to the sides of coaches, the train dangerously over-crowded. He would see train carriages built to carry 120 passengers containing three, four and five times as many people. I say, Sir, that these trains are dangerously over-crowded, and I think that the whole question should be examined most carefully. Year after year the hon. the Minister tells me he is putting more coaches on the lines. He does in fact put more coaches on. But unfortunately he cannot keep up with the increase in the number of commuters that use these lines. Last year the figure was 130,000. It has now gone up to 190,000. And, Sir, despite anything the hon. the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration and Development says, I am prepared to bet that in 20 years’ time the figure will have increased enormously. In fact, one estimate is that in 20 years’ time the number of commuters between Johannesburg and Soweto will have gone up to a quarter of a million. I do not believe that the hon. the Minister is planning ahead sufficiently in order to be able to cone with this tremendous problem. I also think he will have to consult, not only his own Department, but also other departments. Because, Sir, the geographic nature of this problem is very important. Here we have a situation where, except for those who live in Alexandra township, who are being steadily reduced as the years go on, all the Africans in Johannesburg are concentrated in one geographic area. I refer namely to the south-west of Johannesburg. And that whole gainfully-employed section of more than 600,000 people who live there all head for the same area between the hours of 4 a.m. and 7 a.m., and in the evening they all head for home between the peak hours of 4 p.m. and, say, 7 p.m. So we have the situation where one whole town virtually makes for one industrial area in the early morning. It is inevitable that this must lead to difficulties in regard to transportation, over-crowding of trains, and the danger of accidents. In either Die Vaderland or Die Transvaler—please forgive me for mixing up the two, Sir, because I believe it is not the thing to do these days—there appeared a news item that there is a train every two minutes from Soweto to Johannesburg. Now, no doubt this is commendable from the point of view of an adequate service.

Do you know how many trains run through Germiston every day?

But the point is, Sir, does anyone know how high the accident rate can be with such short intervals between trains? Surely the margin for error must be very small. After all, Sir, the drivers of these trains are only human beings, and over-worked human beings at that. The possibility of accidents and fatalities is simply enormous if trains run every two minutes. One can imagine what might happen should there be a sudden stoppage on the line. And here I may interpose that most of the accidents seem to spring from a following train crashing into the rear of a stationary train. I suggest that the hon. the Minister should consult with his colleagues in the Department of Bantu Administration and Development and the Department of Planning to ensure that future townships—and there are indeed going to be future townships, despite all plans to reverse the flow of Bantu back to the reserves and the sitting of border industries—are not all located in the same geographic segment outside of Johannesburg. Because, Sir, I foresee the most dangerous complications as far as transport is concerned. These are factors which I bring to the attention of the hon. the Minister. I might add that the same situation applies in regard to the other large industrial complexes in South Africa. For instance, Mr. Speaker, all Africans employed in the Cape Western industrial area are resident in the Langa-Nyanga area, which is also one geographic area. I believe the situation to be slightly different in Durban, because we have Umlazi on one side, and on the other side of the city—resulting in the workers having to travel right through it—is Kwa Mashu. I wish to emphasize. Sir, that the geographic planning and siting of townships which are destined to hold the vast majority of industrial workers in our country must be reconsidered. I think what is needed is a wide-scale inquiry which will take into consideration the over-crowding of trains, the staggering of hours of work, the geographic location of future African townships, and, by the way, the type of carriages used. I know the hon. the Minister is replacing the dangerous wooden carriages with steel carriages as fast as possible. But I suggest he must do it at an even faster rate if he wants to avoid the tragic consequences of accidents in our urban areas. This is a matter of concern to everybody. It is a matter of concern to employers of labour, and it is, of course, also a matter of concern to employees. I am afraid, Sir, that there is considerable nervousness now-a-days among African users of our railways. Ugly situations can develop, leading to all sorts of complications regarding the relationship between the races in this country. I believe, Mr. Speaker, that this is something which deserves the narrowest attention on the part of the hon. the Minister.

Now, Sir, having said all that, I want to end with one kindly note for the hon. the Minister. I think he ought to listen, Sir, because he is not going to get many compliments from me! I wish to say that, as a frequent user of the South African Airways, I consider that service to be remarkably efficient. It compares most favourably with other countries’ air services, both as regards punctuality and efficiency. For my part, I think the Administration deserves to be complimented on the extremely excellent air services which have been provided, both on the internal and the overseas routes.

That also applies to the railways.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member who has just resumed her seat began her speech by complaining about how severely the gold-mining industry would allegedly be hit by these measures. Well, now I am wondering whether her concern cannot be brought into connection with the large donation recently made by Mr. Harry Oppenheimer. A good deal has been said about the non-White railway passengers and about how severely they are being affected. I should like to say something about this aspect and about the increasing accident rate, but as this House is about to adjoun, I shall do so on a later occasion. If we consider the splendid victory achieved by the National Party at the election, while the Opposition was defeated to such an extent that they now look as they do …

Order! That is not relevant now.

I am only making these observations by way of introduction and in order to show how our railway and transport system is being called upon to perform a special task and function as a result of the rapid development and expansion of the economy of our country, and as a result of conditions which have improved for us by reason of the judgment in this Government’s favour.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 23 and debate adjourned.