Mr. Speaker, with your leave I wish to make a brief statement. It is with deep regret that I have to inform this House that a Viscount aircraft of the South African Airways en route from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg via East London on flight S.A. 406 crashed into the sea shortly after seven o’clock yesterday evening while approaching to land at the East London airport. I am afraid that in view of the circumstances the tragic fact must now be accepted that there are no survivors among the 25 persons on board consisting of 20 passengers and 5 crew members. We are all deeply shocked at this tragic accident, this is something which is fortunately of very rare occurrence in South African air travel. On behalf of the Government and the Administration I wish to convey to the next of kin of the deceased our deepest sympathy in their grievous loss.

A board of enquiry is being appointed to investigate the accident and it will report to me as soon as possible. A team of investigators of the Department of Transport set out to East London last night and commenced with the preliminary investigation early this morning. Such a preliminary investigation is necessary before the board of enquiry can commence its task.

We on this side of the House wish to associate ourselves with the hon. the Minister’s expression of sympathy to the next of kin of those who lost their lives in this unfortunate accident. Our South African Airways has an outstanding record and it is an absolute tragedy that something like this should have happened. I wish to convey our sympathy to both the hon. the Minister and the next of kin.

Mr. Speaker, when the House adjourned last night I had put forward I a suggestion that the working of our harbours should be divorced from the control of Railways, which was received by the hon. the Minister with his usual grin of rejection by which we are growing to know him so well these days. He is not always right in doing this. I think that this hon. Minister should learn that other people’s ideas thrown into the pool are thrown in with the object of helping him to solve the problems with which we are faced. One example of this was surely the example of yesterday when the hon. the Minister himself accepted that we put forward the idea of a pipeline a very long time before he accepted it. just think what the position would have been had he accepted the idea when it was first put to him. We put these ideas forward in all sincerity. I am going to repeat what I said last night when I requested that the control of our harbours should be divorced from the control of the South African Railways. I believe that this is not a new plea but an old plea and I believe that at the moment it is more urgent than it has ever been before. Throughout the world harbour development is undergoing what might be called exciting changes. It is undergoing these changes because it is being forced to do so. It is being forced to do so first of all by the revolution in ship design. Ship designs have changed in the last few years. They are changing to-day and they will change again to-morrow. To-day we are living in the era of the bulk carrier which is getting bigger and bigger. We have the advent of containerization and containerized ships. This is a matter I should like to take up with the hon. the Minister a little later. Then we have the gradual disappearance from our seas, and perhaps quicker than many of us would like to see, of the passenger ship as we have known it. Except for the cruise liner, the passenger ship of yesterday is fast disappearing. Together with all these features and happenings, costs are soaring. It is so important that at this stage we devise ways and means of organizing our harbours so that we can get a quicker turn-around of the ships that use them. We here in South Africa cannot afford to lag behind in this explosion which is taking place throughout the world because importing and exporting is our lifeblood. On this we depend. Our harbours handle some 30 million tons of goods per year as the hon. the Minister knows. This is the very substance of our trade. It is the difference between make and break to our economy. I believe that we want some new thinking to help us solve the problems with which our harbours are faced. I say rather regretfully that railway thinking has proved to have been totally inadequate to deal with these problems in the past. That is why I put forward the suggestion which I am again putting forward to-day. Our harbours are the focal point of the bulk of our goods traffic. Yet this Budget which the hon. the Minister has presented to this House lacks any evidence of any vision of forward thinking in regard to the planning of our harbours for the future. The hon. the Minister shakes his head. Let him give me the evidence for which I am looking. South Africa wants it and not just me.

I have already given all the information required.

I am very pleased to have had it but I am still going to put my case to the hon. the Minister because he must answer it. Even when one looks through the General Manager’s report for 1965-’66, in the five and a half pages which are devoted to this question, two half pages are taken up by photographs and one by a graph. It lacks any enthusiasm and just does not give one a spark in regard to the future of our harbours. It leaves one with the thought that something had to be put in about the harbours and that is it. I should like the hon. the Minister to know that more and more support is forthcoming for the suggestion that I have put to him. Before it might have been the opinion of a few people that harbours should be divorced from Railways in their working but this movement is gathering strength and I want the hon. the Minister to go into it quite thoroughly. He will find a surprising amount of support for this amongst his own people who are frustrated in the working of the harbours by the control exercised over them by people sitting in Johannesburg, whom quite honestly we cannot expect to understand the sea and the people who go down to the sea. Let us now for a moment look at the position at our two main ports. I want to deal with Durban first of all which handles some 60 per cent of our traffic. After a combined onslaught over the years by all those interested we have managed to get things under weigh in Durban to some extent. We have pier No. 1 which is going very well indeed. The hon. the Minister has told us that he will go straight on with pier No. 2 when that is finished. We have Richards Bay which I believe is going quite well and which the hon. the Minister assures us will be continued with in spite of the fact that he is now building pier No. 2 in Durban.

He will remember that last year he told me that he would decide between one or the other. I sincerely hope that my understanding of the position at present is correct, namely that he is going to go on with both and that the building at Richards Bay is not going to be delayed in spite of the building of pier No. 2 in Durban, because I believe that both are necessary. Planning has lagged so far behind that by the time these piers are completed they might well be inadequate if the hon. the Minister does not keep his mind on future planning.

In spite of this we still have certain criticisms. I am sorry that the hon. the Minister shrugged off my suggestion for example, for deepening the harbour mouth. I believe that this is one of the great mistakes he made, namely limiting the depth of the entrance to Durban harbour by a sewerage tunnel. I believe that this was a blunder. I believe that the stage will come when this hon. Minister will have to change that opinion. I put forward the suggestion that he should do that and that he should deepen the channel to Island View which would enable bulk cargoes of oil to be brought in at much cheaper rates for the people of South Africa than we can do at the present moment. He shrugged that off with the same kind of laugh as he shrugged off the idea I put to him to-day. Then I should like to know when he is going to get on with the job of deepening and widening the Maydon channel and whether in fact in making the approaches to pier No. 2 he is perhaps going to dredge the bank totally from the middle of the bay and obviate the necessity of dealing with Maydon channel as a single channel. I should like to hear from him what his intentions are in that regard. Then I think Durban needs far better equipment for the handling of bulk cargoes. Whilst we handle them quite well at the moment because we are fortunate in having Maydon Wharf, the apparatus is still quite crude. With the exception of the grain elevator and the sugar loading apparatus which is privately owned, we are very badly off for bulk handling equipment. That does not only apply to Durban, it applies to other ports as well. The removal of goods from the Point in Durban is another matter. We know that the hon. the Minister is removing the Cato Creek offices and sheds and we sincerely hope that these things are going to improve as we go along.

I believe that the need for urgent planning in respect of harbours has shifted from Durban to Cape Town. I believe that the position here in Cape Town is so bad that it can be compared with the position as it was in Durban four or five years ago when delays, congestion and inability to get berths were the rule rather than the exception. I should like to deal with this aspect, but I would like the hon. the Minister to know that the type of agent I am trying to deal with and for whom I am trying to get facilities is the company which has provided us with regular scheduled trips to carry our goods here and to take them away, over the years. I am speaking of the company which operates ships in the to 12,000 ton range—ships with capital costs running into some R1,600 per day. This is the type of ship I propose to deal with in my remarks. I also want to make it quite clear that I am taking the fruit season as the norm because here in Cape Town harbour it would appear, from the information I can get, that the fruit season lasts for approximately eight months of the year. It runs for the greater part of the year. During that period all the berths from A to E are occupied, except for the occasional period, by refrigerated ships loading fruit. That is fair enough. I have no complaints about that. F berth is usually occupied by a mail ship. That leaves, for all the ships operating in and out of this harbour, three working berths, namely G, H and J quay in the Victoria Basin. This is the picture with which all of these companies are faced when they bring their ships to Cape Town to work cargo. In the Victoria Basin I believe the position will get worse. The increasing coaster trade is obviously going to make greater demands upon the facilities which are available in the Victoria Basin. Added to this there is the fact that there is no provision for sheds for the pre-working of their cargo. In many cases, to turn the ship around quickly, these goods are palletized. Time is then needed to handle the cargo before the ship actually arrives. Here there are no facilities of this kind at all, to enable companies to pre-work their cargo and get it prepared for the arrival of their ship. [Interjection.] That hon. member should go and jump in the harbour. In addition, there is a shortage of cranes between E and L berths, but I understand that ten cranes are on order. They will obviously help to offset that position which exists at the moment.

The lack of bulk-handling equipment in this harbour tends to make the position even worse operative in a cramped space, than it does in Durban. We have examples. If the hon. the Minister would like some, I can give him quite a lot. One of his own ships, the Johan Hugo, a collier, has a capacity of tons. The other day when I was looking at her, she managed to discharge 640 tons in one day. The methods are crude. Trucks are not readily available. It takes a very long time to work the cargo. Just imagine, if the ship maintains that rate, and she is not able to improve upon it, the time that that ship is going to lie idle in this port. I understand it takes her about two days to load in Lourenço Marques. As the hon. the Minister is aware, that is an approximate figure. I do not know what it costs the Railways, but it costs private companies somewhere around R1,600 per day for their ships to lie in the roadstead. It must therefore cost the Railways Administration somewhere in the region of R1,000 per day. This ship is being kept in this harbour for considerable periods unnecessarily when it could be bringing more coal for the use of the Railways and the Harbours. I can go on and mention the discharge of wheat, phosphates and sulphur at the port. The hon. the Minister knows about all these matters.

You can quote everything. I shall reply to it.

I do not want to mention all those cases because it takes up the time of this House unnecessarily. My time is short and I want to suggest some solutions to these problems.

Now I come to what I think is the crux of the whole matter. That is the question of labour. They cannot get labour in this port to work their cargoes. In the short time available to me, I want to deal with some suggestions for relieving this position. There are two remedies. The one is the long-term remedy, with which I shall deal first. The long term plan involves building a new harbour. The Minister knows what that involves because he has investigated the possibility of using Woodstock. I believe he must run into difficulties there because he will find the same rocky base which, during blasting for the channel leading into this harbour, caused Cape Town to be rocked. It is just about going to break down every building in Cape Town, and then there is the fantastic cost. Even if he overcomes both problems, I think he will still have an unsuitable harbour. Yesterday we heard the Minister debunk, shall I say, the Saldanha scheme. There are still people who are interested in Saldanha as a general harbour for South Africa. I think the scheme should be further investigated. I believe that the hon. the Minister had sent people to investigate it already. I should like him to tell us the outcome of those investigations if he can. Then there is the question of Rietvlei which, I believe, has been knocked on the head. I should like to put forward a suggestion to the hon. the Minister that he investigate False Bay. Off the Strandfontein coast he will have an adequate depth of water and shallows which may perhaps lend themselves well to breakwaters. He may be able to construct a new harbour there for a comparatively—and I use this word from choice— lower cost than he could do anywhere else. I should also like to know from the Minister what investigation he is conducting, because this is a long-term policy, but this Minister has not got as much time as he thinks he has. I believe that he has no more than ten years. I think he has to get on with the job.

Let us now come to the short-term solution to the problem. The first and foremost requirement is the supply of adequate labour in this harbour to work it. The Minister knows this. He knows what the position is in regard to his gangs at the moment. The minimum number of labourers in a gang is accepted at eight, and the maximum is round about 12. At the moment the average maximum is six. This harbour cannot work. Men are taken from working ships to clear up goods in the sheds, because this Minister is short of labour. He not only has to find labour to work the ships properly during the day, but in my opinion he also has to find labour to work ships at night. He has to indulge in night work in Cape Town to the utmost of his capacity because he has to make the greatest use of the facilities which are available, and there are few enough. I have an example for the hon. the Minister. A ship which used to work 1,000 tons of cargo a day, not so long ago worked 120 tons in a day. One cannot run a harbour like that. I believe that the average has now fallen to somewhere around 600 tons of cargo a day. The Minister has to do something about this. I believe that he must provide more sheds. I believe that he must provide a shed at J berth immediately. The argument has been raised that these are perhaps bulk working berths, but are sheds going to interfere with the working of bulk cargoes? I think it is nonsense. The argument that has been put up all the time is that the provision of these sheds is going to interfere with the working of bulk cargoes. I believe that that is a nonsensical argument because the Minister is doing this very thing in Cape Town harbour at the moment. He is working a cargo of phosphates alongside a berth which is provided with sheds and it is not interfering with the working of either. If he would provide that shed, it would enable the ship owners to pre-work their cargo and it would give them some facilities for getting their cargo ready for their ships coming in. In any case, I understand that the requirements for space for timber are going to diminish in this harbour and not increase. Above all, I believe that this Minister has to deal with the labour problem in this harbour. Irrespective of the policy enunciated by the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration, he has to provide labour to work the ships in adequate numbers. What is more, this labour must be housed in the dock area or near to it. I believe that this Minister knows that. There is no sense at all in providing labour to work shifts and to work night shifts at the docks if they are going to be housed 15 or 20 miles away from the area in which they are going to be used. I believe that this is the problem to which the hon. the Minister has to apply his mind first. I know that he is putting up compound buildings in the harbour at the moment. I sincerely hope that they are adequate to meet the position as I have described it to him. If they are not, then I sincerely hope that he will make provision to erect the extra accommodation immediately, so that the working of this harbour can be improved, the delays to ships cut, and ship owners who have provided us with the services we require over the course of the years, will not be penalized for coming here. Because eventually, if the working of this harbour does not improve, the Minister must realize, the same as everybody else, that the rates for the carrying of cargo to and from this port must increase. They must add to the spiralling cost of living which we are experiencing at the moment. It costs a ship R1,600 a day to lie in the roadstead. If that is added to the cost of the goods in her holds, there is an appreciable increase in the cost of each item which the public have to pay for.

Before my time is up, I want to deal with two particular points to give the Minister an opportunity of putting the position quite clearly to us. The first matter is this mooted R100 million super tanker docks planned at Saldanha Bay, which the Minister said yesterday was a pipe-dream. But in spite of the fact that he referred to it as a pipe-dream, the Minister was, according to a newspaper report, considering it. I want to know a few things about this. First of all, is the Minister in fact considering it? If so, from what angle is he considering it? Because this embraces entirely new principles in harbour working. The first new aspect is private enterprise in the harbour and private enterprise in the working of pipelines in South Africa. These are two very vital factors in regard to which I think the Minister owes us a little information. I believe that people have investigated this site. I believe that members of the Minister’s staff have been to investigate this site. Whether they have done so in their private capacities or not, I do not know. But I think that here is an opportunity for the Minister to take this House into his confidence and let us know what his intentions are in regard to this scheme. I personally believe that the site I have recommended on the False Bay coast, at Strandfontein, can adequately provide for all the facilities which the Minister wants —and it is not 120 miles away, as Saldanha Bay is.

The second point I wish to deal with is the question of the Universe Defiance. This ship is an 87,000-ton tanker—this was reported in this morning’s paper, I believe—which has requested the use of the dry dock in Cape Town for a period of five days towards the end of this week. I understand that the dock charges amount to something like R3,100 per day. They are willing to pay this amount. They have already flown the spares here. The spares are lying at the docks, awaiting the arrival of the ship. They have also flown out their marine superintendent who is here to supervise the work. But now they find that because a ship called the Suiderkruis is using our dry dock as a wet dock for conversion work, they cannot have the use of the dry dock for five days to execute the repairs. I believe that they were very reasonable about the matter and asked if they could use the dry dock on the ship’s return trip, towards the end of April or in May, whenever she came back, if they delayed doing the necessary repairs. However, they were told that it was doubtful, or that they could not have the use of the dock. Now I want to know from the Minister why, in respect of the best customer South Africa has ever had for the use of this dry dock, namely the company which made this request, is this attitude adopted? I repeat that this company is the best customer we have ever had for the use of our dry dock. Is it a political decision, or is it a Railway decision?

What has politics to do with it?

The hon. the Minister asks what politics has to do with it. I am asking the Minister that very question, because that is possibly the view that is being taken. Let me inform the Minister of this. This is an American company, and that is the view that they are entitled to take when the Minister will not move a ship out of what is, after all, a dry dock. The Administration is not prepared— and this was an appeal direct to the Minister— to move a ship which is not using the dry dock as such but as a wet dock for conversion work.

Firstly, there has been no appeal to me and, secondly, you are talking nonsense.

Then let the Minister give me the facts. Has the decision been changed? Is the ship going to use the dock?

No.

The Minister says that it is not going to use the dock. Where am I wrong then? The Minister has told me that the ship is not going to be allowed to use the dock. Therefore I contend that my facts are correct. He has refused the ship permission to use the dock for five days at R3,100 per day in order to effect the repairs which are necessary. I repeat, Sir, that I understand this to be the best customer South Africa has ever had for the use of the dry dock. Why is this ship not being allowed to use the dry dock? Because the facilities at Table Bay docks are so inadequate that the Minister is using our dry dock as a wet dock for the conversion of a ship to produce fishmeal. This is the answer. [Interjection.] I do not know whose ship it is and I am not interested either. There may be something in that question. I do not know because I have not investigated that angle and I do not want to. What I am interested in is this. A dry dock is provided here to succour ships when they are in need, as the Universe Defiance is now in need. Yet the Minister is using it as an extra repair berth and refuses a ship which requires dry docking the use of the dry dock. I believe that a Dutch ship has also been refused permission to use the dry dock at the end of the month, and for the same reason. There we have two ships which have come round the Cape, which have asked us for succour and the use of our dry dock, and their requests have been refused because we are using our dry dock for other purposes, and that because of the inadequacy of our harbour.

Mr. Speaker, apart from the fact that it is extremely difficult to react to what hon. members of the Opposition have said up to now, this debate has reached such a low level and become so monotonous that it may very well be compared with the monotony of the Knersvlakte.

A few harmless remarks and references were made. However, we are still waiting for positive and constructive criticism from the hon. members of the Opposition. At the moment, I am in two minds. The position is that it has either been as a result of the political growth which has taken place in this country since 1960, both within and outside this House, or it has been as a result of the lead given by the mouthpiece of the Opposition which said certain things about the estimates which we are at present discussing, but the fact remains that the Opposition has undergone a major change. This newspaper had the following to say—

Now, I do not know whether it is as a result of the lead which was given by their mouthpiece, or whether it is as a result of the strong and positive application of the policy of this party, but it is very obvious and noteworthy that both in this and preceding debates the Opposition has this year agreed with the Government more often than they have disagreed. This debate furnished further evidence of this phenomenon. I think that the way in which this Government has succeeded, in the short period of five years, in compelling the official Opposition in this country to agree with it and tacitly accept its policy, as it did this afternoon and yesterday in this debate, should be placed on record as redounding to the credit of this House and this Government. One gets the impression—although we did have a few references to the Budget, unaccompanied by any convincing arguments—that the Opposition is still suffering from this ailment it has of revealing itself as a Party which lives only for the moment and as a result thinks only of itself and not of other people. That can be seen in its arguments. The yesterdays they want to forget, and it would be a good thing for the Opposition if they could do that, and the to-morrows they leave to themselves. But we will not let them off so easily with that kind of attitude.

It is particularly interesting to refer to the few remarks which were made here—and they were more of a humanitarian nature—that the third class passengers on the Railways were allegedly making the largest contribution to passenger income. Proof was adduced how in the past two years, for the period April to November, 1965, as well as April to November, 1966, there was an increase of almost 10 million such passengers, but this was done without conceding that this service is actually a subsidized or guaranteed service. Consequently I should like to ascertain from the Opposition wherein the profitableness of this section of the Railways lies. Over the same period, for example, a greater contribution was made from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. In the following year it changed from R5 million to R8.1 million. In addition, the plea that the decreasing of tariffs, for the sake of fairness and for humanitarian reasons, for this class of passenger will, according to their own norms, and by implication, not help to promote inflation in this country, is a form of logic which I cannot, with the best will in the world, come to understand; because a decrease in the tariffs would cause the buying power of this category of passengers to be increased, and increased buying power could only serve to stimulate further inflation. To me therefore this argument and this attitude are quite invalid, and I would appreciate it if we could obtain greater clarity on this matter. It is arguments and points of views such as this which cause one to think that we are still having to deal with the Eulenspiegel mentality of the Opposition, a waking sleep, with one eye open and the other closed. In this way, incidentally, we are trying to discuss this matter on common ground. It is the traditional thing for that Party to do, but I must tell you in all fairness, Sir, that it is inclined to arouse suspicion amongst us and the public.

In this way arguments have been adduced in regard to salaries, to the effect that they ought to and must be increased, and irrelevant facts and arguments have been adduced. As against that I just want to emphasize briefly this single fact, and then I would like to ascertain from them in what way this practical proof could be anti-humanitarian, or prejudicial to the interests of the railway-workers. Since 1948, up to the last budget, a total amount of more than R190 million has been voted for the improvement of the income of Railway officials which, in practical terms, mean an average improvement of more than RIO million per year unintermittently over a period of 18 years. No, Sir, a person who tries to raise a defence against this point of view or who tries to make propaganda to the effect that this Government does not have the interests of the railway-workers at heart, must necessarily be guilty of lack of goodwill or of having ulterior motives. I think it is one of the best records, and one of the most effective examples and proofs to neutralize such an attitude. For the year 1965-’66 an amount of R35.25 million was voted, an amount which was not a sporadic donation, but a yearly improvement. From October, 1965, until such time as it is discontinued, it will mean an improvement of R35.25 million per year. Over and above that, an improvement of R1 million per year has been effected as regards the cost scale payable, with effect from May, 1965. In order to overcome the chronic shortage of staff in certain grades and at specific centres, a subsistence allowance of R60 per month for married persons and R30 per month for unmarried persons has been introduced. All this is irrefutable proof that this argument is an unfounded one, and that an argument such as the one which the Opposition has adduced is an unfair one to use in a debate such as this. For me the statistics in regard to appeals are conclusive proof of the fact that the Railway officials are more satisfied than they have ever been. The figure in this connection has diminished by almost 50 per cent in 12 months, from 644 in the previous year to only 333 during the past year. I think that is conclusive proof of the state of mind and the satisfaction amongst the workers.

In regard to the house ownership scheme an amount of more than R91 million has been spent since 1938, and that is surely not proof of unwillingness. If the Opposition now wants to plead for the increasing of wages and salaries, I want to ask them whether they would be prepared to and whether as a result of that they want to, propose that the tariffs be increased again. If they are not prepared to propose that the tariffs be increased again, where must the money come from to pay for these increased salaries?

Did you not listen to my speech?

I listened very carefully. The hon. member for Yeoville puts me in mind of a big, old farm dog of mine which used to lie and sleep on the grass. If any person trod on his tail he would give a muted growl and snap at your ankles and pretend to be angry. But I know him too well; he does not bite. I am asking them whether they want to use the expected surplus, as proposed by the hon. the Minister, to bring about the desired salary increase. The R473,000 will result in an increase of precisely .14 per cent. In other words, for an official with a salary of R150 a month, it would mean an increase of precisely R.21, or just more than 20 cents per month. I want to ask the hon. members whether they are not ashamed to suggest a thing like this under the present circumstances? I think it is unfair. Is it the honest opinion of those people that to prevent further inflation a disastrous loss for the Railways and for the entire economy of the country should be brought about, and can that be reconciled with what we should like to have in this House, namely responsible and unselfish patriotism? We know that they find things like that very difficult to understand. I should like the next speaker on the United Party’s side to tell the public very clearly and unequivocally whether they are in favour of salary and wage increases and whether they will then be satisfied if tariffs had to be increased even further. I just want to remind them of their attitude in 1966 in this House, when they themselves opposed, tooth and nail, any suggestion of tariff increases.

A further very amusing allegation which we had from the Opposition was that the Railways would, with the implementation of its present policy, promote rather than combat inflation. I want to know from them whether they are not aware of the fact that these unrealistic wage and salary increases which they are pleading for would in fact serve to promote rather than to combat inflation, because if wage and salary increases were granted to Railway servants then it would also result in demands for increases in salaries and wages in other Departments. Mr. Speaker, inflation is in fact a problem which has arisen out of the fact that things are going so well with our country, and the Government cannot be blamed for that, except that it may perhaps be imputed to the Government that it had done its task too well by having carried out its responsibility towards the economic development of the country too dutifully. That is something the Opposition can in fact blame us for. Sir, what does the Railways have to do with that? The Opposition have tried to circumvent the Railways by putting the blame on the Government. Last year they put the blame on the Railways. With these anti-inflationary measures, the Government is merely trying to carry out its responsibility further, which is to prevent that prosperity and inflation destroying this country’s sound economy. No person with a sense of responsibility can justifiably attack the Government or criticize it for the steps which it has taken in this regard.

It is expected that the steps which have been taken to counter inflationary tendencies and slow down the economic rate of growth, will also keep in check the increase in the country’s traffic. Nevertheless the industrial development, which is continuing, albeit at a moderate tempo, will still result in an ever-increasing demand for Railway services, particularly if the attempt of the Government to promote the export trade of our country is taken into consideration, but the Railways remains adjusted to meeting the countrys’ requirements, and apart from unforeseen setbacks there ought to be no serious problems in this country.

Arising from what the hon. member for Bethlehem said, the hon. member for Durban (Point) took great pleasure in asking him: “What precisely does the mealie crop and the drought have to do with the revenue of the Railways?”, and he was supported in this query with hollow laughter from his colleagues on that side of the House. I found it so amusing that I could only shake my head. We know that the hon. member for Durban (Point) is fond of taking a gap, but I want to add that it has to be a reasonably large one, at least a little larger than a bag of mealies. What are the facts in this regard? It was our experience during 1963-’64 when there was a record mealie crop in this country, that the administration’s means were stretched to the utmost to transport the mealies and that urgent steps had to be taken to be able to handle that traffic. The immediate reaction of the Opposition to this will be: Yes, that is low tariff traffic; it can have no appreciable effect on the income of the Railways. That is not the point here, Mr. Speaker. In the following two years we had crop failures, and all those means which had been utilized in order to transport that record crop remained to a great extent unutilized during those two years. I am referring here to two major items, they are the improvement of the railway line to East London, the introduction of diesel locomotives on that section and the erection of a grain elevator at a cost of more than R4 million. The capital invested there did not produce any return. Where should the Railways have obtained that income from? And then the hon. members of the Opposition can still come forward here with the argument that the pipeline which the Administration has had built is too expensive! Mr. Speaker, to wrest a matter out of its context and utter superficially clever statements in that regard is truly not the primary task or responsibility of a responsible political leader in this country of ours. It is necessary for us to see these things in their context and in perspective before we venture to express any criticism. Apart from mealies there are also other products such as sugar cane and fruit which create major seasonal problems for the Cape Railways, and it is quite natural and normal that many of the steps taken to solve those problems will not be as profitable in the off-season as they ought to be, but we accept that as a normal function of the Railways. It has been our experience that no less than 620,000 fewer tons of commercial commodities had to be transported, mainly in the form of grain, kraalmanure and fertilizer, cement, sugar, wood, coal, asbestos, fishmeal and salt, both as a result of the anti-inflationary measures taken by the Government as well as the droughts. As a result of the drought no fewer than 365.000 fewer gallons of cream was transported, and so we can continue.

In addition the transport costs showed an increase as a result of traffic demands, which to a somewhat lesser extent gave rise to an increase in train operational and maintenance costs, once more as a result of the salary increases. I shall mention a few examples: Maintenance of railway lines and works—an increase of 13.23 per cent; general costs—an increase of 10.86 per cent; train operational costs—an increase of 11.69 per cent. Although this sharp increase under these expenditure heads can be attributed to salary increases, there were other additional factors such as the increase of the amount of traffic which was handled and the consequent increase in Sunday and overtime pay; the higher price and increased consumption of coal; the increased expenditure for the maintenance of buildings, bridges and signalling installations; increased value depreciation costs as a result of additional assets put into operation; obligations in respect of interest on increased withdrawals; increased expenditure in respect of temporary allowances and bonus payments to pensioners; increased interest payments to the Superannuation Fund and the Betterment Fund as a result of larger credit balances in these funds. In this way we can continue to rationalize and place the matter in regard to the Railways in the correct perspective. Sir, the facts which I have mentioned here speak louder than the attitude and the suggestions of an ineffective Opposition. Despite all these impeding factors I should like to refer especially to a number of aspects of the Railways which deserve special mention. Notwithstanding all these impeding factors the number of passenger journeys per rail increased during this period from 316 million to 451 million per annum.

Chiefly in respect of Bantu.

I am coming to that. I am sorry if I trod too near the tail again. In the urban areas only, almost a thousand more trains were running than five years ago. The total number of passengers conveyed by air increased from 410,000 to no less than 720,000. The Railways loaded the equivalent of 7.7 million short trucks during the past financial year. I find this very impressive because if all these trucks were coupled together they would stretch for more than 35,000 miles, almost halfway round the earth. The number of staff has increased by only 5.3 per cent during the past five years, but the wage account has increased by more than 50 per cent. It is appropriate to point out at this stage the efficiency of the administration of the Railways and the achievements which they have accomplished in this connection of their own accord.

As a result of the shortage of staff which they have been experiencing, the following emergency steps have been taken. Full use has been made of the services of pensioners and married women, and schemes have been introduced to curtail the training of trade apprentices, particularly after they have succeeded in passing an ability test, so that a person may assume full responsibility after a period of 148 weeks and be accepted as a full-fledged artisan. These are all projects which have been undertaken in the interests of the requirements being experienced in practice by the Railways but which they were able to deal with of their own accord.

I want to refer next to accidents on Railway crossings. Altogether 58 persons have been killed and 137 injured during the past financial year, in comparison with 94 and 165 in the previous financial year. That is indeed a very praiseworthy improvement and one which deserves honourable mention.

In regard to housing for non-Whites the Department spends no less than R113,949 on new quarters for non-white staff in South-West Africa. We must expose this Eulenspiegel mentality of the United Party, this waking sleep.

We realize and we state with conviction that the growth in South Africa’s economic development during the past few years would not have been possible without the effective transportation system of which this country may be justly proud. The modern jet aircraft of the South African Airways have made a substantial contribution to the efficiency of the system. Above all I want to salute, in all seriousness, the hon. the Minister and his General Manager with his team of officials, three times for another year of service to the industry, the economy and the country.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Randburg has travelled far and wide with generalized statistics which are available to all of us who want to read them in the documentation which has been made available by the hon. the Minister. I do not think that he expects me to react to his not very effective spate of utterances here to-day which seem to be circumscribed by an attitude that if you blame the drought, praise the Minister and damn the Opposition and then you have made a good speech. The impact of this Budget and of Government policies on the Western Cape is, I think, deserving of close examination by those who are concerned with the industrial development and economic prosperity of this part of the Republic. I want to say at the outset to the hon. the Minister that viewed from this angle his Budget is most disappointing. We in the Western Cape have been subjected to all manner of experimental and ideological gimmicks which have retarded growth on several fronts and which have disturbed confidence in the industrial and economic life of the Western Cape.

Nonsense.

I propose to convince the hon. the Deputy Minister that his “nonsense” came out a little too soon. I propose, if the hon. the Deputy Minister will listen to me, to give to him the opinion of the economists and the industrialists of the Western Cape who are concerned with the industrial and economic development of this part of the country. I propose to deal with several aspects of this Budget in so far as that approach is concerned. Whilst every endeavour has been made to promote industrial development in the Western Cape, these endeavours have not met with anything near satisfactory results. I say that that is because of Government attitudes towards the Western Cape in several fields. I want to draw the attention of the House to some of the relevant statistics. They are I believe cause for alarm when we realize that a highly industrialized economy will be necessary to provide employment which will be fitting to the population of the Western Cape of which, as hon. members know, at the moment 90 per cent are coloured and white persons.

[Inaudible.]

The hon. Deputy Minister does perhaps not know that 90 per cent of the population in the Western Cape is white and Coloured. This population composition will be unique. The Government is spending considerable sums on housing for Coloureds and on education for them in all fields. This will demand growing economic opportunities for the Coloured people who are progressing on the road of enlightened living. This essential development is being bedevilled by the policies of the Government as indicated by the Budget before us. The Western Cape needs and is entitled to a revision or some relief as far as Railway rates are concerned. The Minister has turned a deaf ear to representations which have been made to him consistently and persistently by industry and commerce in the Western Cape. Until that relief is forthcoming this area of the Republic will have a retarded economic growth with all its direct and indirect consequences. I want to point out to this House that the fact that the Western Cape is not growing commensurately with other centres is borne out by the fact that of the applications for the establishment of new industries in the year 1965-’66, only 7.4 per cent of the total for the Republic were for industries to be established in the Western Cape. According to a recent statement by the chief town and regional planner of the Cape Provincial Administration of the zoned industrial land in the Cape Peninsula and its environs 45 per cent in the Cape Town municipal area is undeveloped, thanks largely to the Department of Bantu Administration who refuse the necessary labour for that development; 40 per cent in the Parow municipal area is undeveloped, 80 per cent of the industrial land set aside in the Bellville municipal area is undeveloped and 36 per cent of the Divisional Council industrial oven are undeveloped. But an even more glaring example of retarded growth can be found further out in the Western Cape. The hon. member for Parow is so keen to refer to “sandduine”, but it may be interesting for him to know that despite planning and considerable financial expenditure by the Municipality of Worcester to provide services and facilities approximately 60 per cent of the area proclaimed for industry in that town remains undeveloped. And there are no “sandduine” there. It is true that the export of processed products from this area enjoys an advantage in so far as the export trade is concerned but these advantages are to a very great extent attributable to preferential tariffs, tariffs which may well fall away should the U.K. enter the common market. In relation to internal trade, on the other hand, the Western Cape has an accepted disadvantage in that it is further away from the main markets of the country than are other industries.

And still you want us to increase certain classes of tariffs?

If only the hon. member for Parow will contain himself he will learn what I have to say. I am trying to sketch a picture which apparently is unknown to him although he is a very keen member of the Western Province Development Association. However, this disability to which the Western Province is subjected is increased every time there is an increase in railway rates. The hon. the Minister has been asked to review the increases in rates he announced last year, increases which he has maintained in this Budget. Industry has been fairly modest in its request for a change in these tariffs. Firstly, the hon. the Minister has been asked to direct that rail tariff changes should in future take due cognizance of and seek to remedy the highly unsatisfactory position whereby each successive increase in rates magnifies the disabilities of the Western Cape, disabilities arising from distance and the special concessions granted elsewhere, to the detriment of the industrial economy of the Cape, an economy upon which employment opportunities for its expanding White and Coloured populations depend. Secondlly, the hon. the Minister was asked to allow a much steeper downward tapering of rates particularly for rail haulage of goods in excess of 400 miles. Thirdly, the hon. the Minister was asked to introduce special port rates from Cape Town along similar lines than those accorded to Port Elizabeth and East London. I submit that these requests are not unreasonable. As a matter of fact, the hon. the Minister last year referred to the fact that the Schumann Commission had recommended that the special port rates between Port Elizabeth and East London and the Transvaal competitive area should be abolished. Nevertheless, the hon. the Minister has turned a deaf ear to the recommendation of the Schumann Commission as well as to the representations from the Cape industrialists. In this matter the hon. the Minister has remained quite obstinate. However, he must be warned that industrialists in the Western Cape will continue to press him for relief in respect of what is regarded as inequitable treatment being meted out to them. This advantageous position in which the Western Cape finds itself is further worsened by every increase in tariffs. I should like to give the hon. the Minister certain examples of this although I think he ought to be aware of these because they have already been conveyed to him if what I have seen in Press reports is correct. Increases during 1966 in respect of rates 1 to 3 in so far far as the Western Cape area is concerned were, respectively, 7.9 per cent, 5.7 per cent and 9.1 per cent. In so far as Port Elizabeth is concerned these percentages are, respectively 3.8, 2.2 and 4.3 and in respect of East London 3.9, 2.3 and 4.4. Here there is in addition a 10 per cent development area rebate as well. So the attitude of this Government is threatening development here and when once industrialists find that the advantages of establishing industries in the Cape are outweighed by disadvantages we shall not be able to develop at the rate necessary to provide for this area’s growing population. It is no use hon. members on the Government benches—and there are several of them—lending their support to the Western Cape being developed industrially so long as the Minister continues placing unfair burdens on industries in the Western Cape and these hon. members remain silent.

But you want us to increase the lower tariffs!

I should also like to remind the hon. the Minister that manufacturers in the Western Cape are for the most part manufacturers in the light industries group. These are bearing the greatest increase in railway costs because in addition to the tariffs the Minister has also imposed a surcharge on parcels of 250 lbs., or under. What is more, the hon. the Minister has done that without carrying out the corresponding recommendation of the Schumann Commission, namely to introduce truck loads so that the wholesaler can take advantage of bulk railing and in that way reduce costs to the inland trader. The effect of this imposition of a 50 per cent charge on these small parcels constitutes a burden now being borne by the small trader, the small inland trader, the man who orders a small quantity of shirts, or whatever it might be, from the Cape Town manufacturers. It is no use the Minister saying this is only a small item; that it is only a fractional figure, because all these fractional figures are mounting up and meanwhile the trader has to absorb his additional costs together with the inflationary rentals, inflationary wages, etc., that he is called upon to pay. I think the Minister realizes that if this relief which is asked for is not granted, the consequences to the Western Cape can be most serious.

I should like to refer to yet another aspect of the application of the policy of the hon. the Minister in so far as if affects the Western Cape. I refer to the unfair and inequitable manner in which the increase in suburban rail tariffs of last year is being applied in the Cape Peninsula. As will be remembered the hon. the Minister announced last year an increase of 20 per cent on first and second class fares. Well. I do not know who his mathematicians are in his Department because, let me point out to him, in some instances these increases amount to as much as 38 per cent! As a matter of fact these increases vary from 20 per cent to 33j per cent on the Simonstown suburban line and from 20 per cent to 23 per cent on the Bellville line. These then are the adjustments—never in favour of the customer; never in favour of the man who has to use that service; never in favour of the man who has to use this form of public transport to and from his daily work. Here again there is an additional burden being placed on people in the Western Cape. The Minister in his speech referred to the tendency of locating factories and production plants closer to the main markets. He said the reasons for this were obvious —the conveyance of consumer goods and manufactured consumer goods were subject to the higher rating with a resultant increased cost to the consumer. The natural and reasonable reaction of a manufacturer is to avoid this increased cost factor if at all possible. The Minister in his speech complained that although the domestic demands for the products of the manufacturing industry were expected to increase by approximately 8 per cent during 1967, the industries’ rail transport demand will increase by only 4 per cent. This is quite understandable. I want to deal here with a matter which was raised by the hon. member for Yeoville and perhaps give one or two instances as to how this dangerous and unhealthy policy of the Government of relying for 50 per cent of its income on 17 per cent of the goods which are charged for at the high rate is working out. In Cape Town for instance, which is the port which handles imported timber from the west coast, we find that if the timber is peeled and converted to veneer in the Cape and is then railed inland, it is railed at rate 6. But if the logs in bulk are railed they are railed at rate 13. The effect is this. If the importer of timber or the lumber miller decides that he is going to take advantage of the lower cost of transportation of logs and he is going to site his factory inland, he uses double the number of railway trucks while the Railway only gets half the income it would get if it allowed the veneer to be carried in half the number of trucks at the same rate as the logs. There was a more alarming example, and I think that the Minister is aware of this. A certain group intended establishing a lumber milling concern in the Eastern Transvaal. They wanted to process timber and convert it into chipboard, whereupon the chipboard would be railed to the Reef for marketing. They asked to be placed in a position not less favourable than that of Reef manufacturers. The effect of the Minister’s policy, was as follows on the demands which would be made on the Railways. This company found that, dealing with a given quantity of logs over a period which it could utilize if it established a mill, it would require 2,500 trucks to move the timber in bulk, unsawn, from the Eastern Transvaal to the Reef for processing. But if that same timber was converted into chipboard in the Eastern Transvaal the chipboard could be railed to the Reef with the use of 900 trucks only, as against 2,500 for the raw material. What is the position as regards the producer? The producer having met the Railways to the extent of using only 900 trucks as against 2,500, finds the cost would be R150,000 more than if he used the 2,500 trucks. That is the extra amount that he would have to pay to the Railways. The Minister’s policy is simply this, and he referred to it in his speech, namely that industries are being established where the market is so that they may take advantage of raw materials being produced and brought to the market area for processing. In the case of the Eastern Transvaal—which was contemplated as a border industry area—the Railways will be called upon to provide 2,500 trucks, which is 1,600 trucks more than would be necessary for the processed article, and they will do so at a loss of R150,000.

Those are all facts of which I think the Minister is aware. I think that the Minister is aware of this proposed industry which is, I believe, being dropped. I want to know, and perhaps the Minister will be good enough to inform us, whether this policy is under review? What tariffs are to be applied to goods manufactured in the border areas? Will these goods be conveyed at the same high rate as manufactured goods, or will there be more of the preferential development area rebate of 10 per cent? How are these rates going to be applied, for instance, in relation to the Western Cape?

Reverting back to the position in the Western Cape. I want to say this to the hon. the Minister. We in the Western Cape appreciate the Minister’s realistic approach to labour requirements as far as this area is concerned. Here perhaps the Deputy Minister of Bantu Administration will bear with me. The Minister has told us of the necessity of constructing a new compound at the Cape Town docks. He told us of the necessity of using Bantu labour in the Cape Town docks. I want to say that, unless a brake is put on by all sorts of artificial means by this Government, the tempo of development to be expected in the Western Cape and the necessary development of the docks, will not provide the hon. the Minister of Bantu Administration with a 5 per cent reduction, but the hon. Minister of Transport will find that he will have to increase his black labour force by a minimum of 10 per cent per annum to cope with the development in the Western Cape.

We thank the Minister of Transport for being realistic about it. But cannot the same realism be applied as far as the industrialists are concerned, who have the same need for labour, in order that there might be this development?

Tell me candidly: Is an increase of 10 per cent per annum your policy?

I have merely told the hon. the Deputy Minister that instead of his colleague being an effective King Canute to the extent of 5 per cent per annum he will be enveloped in a 10 per cent increase in the number of black workers. That is the policy of the Minister of Transport. The Deputy Minister need not ask me whether it is mine. It is the Minister of Transport’s policy. He is building compounds, and he is doing it of necessity. I take it that the Bantu Affairs Department is going to produce some secret weapon if we find ourselves without labourers in the Western Cape. Perhaps we will hear about that at some time or other.

I want to deal with one other matter, and I want to make an appeal to the hon. the Minister. I know that his heart is soft and sympathetic as far as this matter is concerned. He has perhaps to deal with other colleagues in the Cabinet to meet this position. The Minister has referred to the necessity of employing pensioners and their wives, their womenfolk, in the railway services to cope with staff shortages. I want to ask the Minister whether he will not give an assurance to the large band of railway pensioners who cannot be properly or suitably re-employed in the Railway Administration. I want him to see whether they cannot be given an opportunity of obtaining suitable employment outside the Administration and not have to suffer a reduction of their temporary allowances. This penalty is not suffered by those who are reemployed by the Administration. The Minister as an old railwayman will know that there are many pensioners who have given years and years of service to the Railways and Harbours Administration, who for health reasons, who, because of age and other reasons, cannot be suitably re-employed within the Administration. It seems that it is an excessive penalty which they have to bear if they obtain employment in the outside market. The Minister said to me last year that this is—I think—a matter for the Minister of Finance. I think it would give a great deal of encouragement to pensioners if the Minister could assure us when he replies to this debate that he will use his best endeavours to persuade the Treasury that this concession should be made available to the pensioners.

We have had many figures quoted to us in regard to the increases in salaries in relation to the increases in the cost-of-living index. We have had many figures quoted to show that the percentage of salaries’ increases has been more than that of the cost-of-living index. I need only read to the Minister the words of Mr. Botha, the President of the Federation of Salaried Staff Associations. Mr. Botha and his staff had been as loyal as any staff can be to the Government. He said this—

The Government has been requested by this side of the House over and over again to be fair to the salaried man and the wage-earner in its employ, and this applies also to the Railways. Is there any reason for denying the justice to the employees of having a cost-of-living allowance attached and related to the cost-of-living index? Is there any reason why that should not be given to them? The Government is the one which has to determine and control the cost-of-living index, and if it is unable to do so it is not the wage-earner or the salaried man who should be penalized. When we are given these figures of percentages of increases in salaries and in the cost of living the Minister knows as well as I do that he only has to go to the wife of any railwayman and ask her how she is getting along, and then he will know what the impact of the cost of living is on the railway worker under this Government.

So I ask the Minister to give regard to these matters I have raised, which are, firstly, the difficulties under which the industrialists in the Western Cape are operating. The Minister is aware of those difficulties. Secondly, I ask that there should be a review of this policy of relying too much on the high-rated traffic on the Railways, and thirdly, that he will give consideration to the pensioner in so far as his temporary allowances are concerned, and to the employees of the Railways, to assist them in combating the cost of living with which they are faced.

I am sure the hon. member for Green Point will excuse me if I do not follow up immediately on what he has said, because I do not want to confine myself to the Western Province since I do not represent a constituency in the Western Province. I should like to reply to the Opposition on the Budget in more general terms.

The criticism that was levelled at us by the hon. members on the opposite side was everything but constructive. It is my privilege to represent in this House a large number of Railway officials, and it is obvious therefore that I listened very attentively during the course of this debate to the criticism being levelled by the United Party. I shall later in the course of my debate return to that. In my opinion, the United Party fell into the trap on two occasions. These are matters which I shall take further and which I shall also mention in my constituency, things which I shall mention at the very first opportunity outside this House. I shall return to that in a moment. However, I should like to make an appeal to hon. members on the opposite side —and I think it is quite fair on my part to expect this of them— at least to see the background of a series of facts in the right perspective when they rise in this House to attack the present Budget and make an onslaught on the hon. the Minister and the staff responsible for the introduction of the Budget.

The S.A. Railways is one of the largest State undertakings in the world. It consists of a network of plus/minus 14,000 miles of railway lines, of which 4,698 single track miles will have been electrified at the end of 1967. Annually the S.A. Railways transports more than 350 million suburban and 27 million main line passengers, as well as 104 million tons of goods. But what is important is that we should note that 84 per cent of the R165 million worth of goods purchased by the Railways are of local origin. A transport system such as the S.A. Railways cannot remain in operation if sufficient rolling stock is not purchased from time to time, because that is the preservation of any transport system. The carrying capacity of the S.A. Railways is increased from time to time by the purchase of suitable rolling stock, and since the beginning of the present financial year the following units have been put into service: 85 electrical locomotives, 30 diesel locomotives, 12 electric motor coaches, 21 plain trailers, 96 package and baggage vans, 5,655 standard goods trucks and 361 narrow gauge goods trucks. Allow me to refer in passing to the fact that the following units are on order: 50 electric locomotives, 90 diesel locomotives, 31 suburban motor coaches, 77 plain trailers,50 third-class main line coaches, 5,595 goods trucks and 10 narrow gauge guards vans.

The hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) referred very competently yesterday to the United Party’s poor past record. Now surely it is not fair to stand up here and criticize without, on this occasion also, going into the record of hon. members on the opposite side when they were in power. I do not want to dwell on a long series of figures. All I want to state as a fact is that when we accepted the reins of government on 26th May, 1948, and when the then Minister of Transport introduced his Budget in 1949, it was only possible to purchase the following rolling stock: 94 steam locomotives, 13 electric locomotives, 103 passenger coaches, and 3,389 trucks. We must also take into consideration that in 1947 the United Party, shortly before they lost power, had reached the zenith of their achievement, and there was at that time not sufficient rolling stock to put into service to meet the requirements of the S.A. Railways. While I am dealing with their record I should like to take the matter further, because the hon. member for Bloemfontein (District) did not take it far enough.

But all the traffic offered was transported, and you know it.

Order! I want to point out to the hon. member that the matters he is now touching upon have already been mentioned in this debate, and we do not want any repetition.

I then want to mention a matter which has not yet been touched upon. It is that anything can be said about the National Government when we come to the Railway Estimates, but it cannot be said that in our time it was necessary for the hon. the Minister to appoint a Grievances Commission, or to appoint a commission to investigate the application of the language regulations.

All unnecessary.

Those are things which did not take place under the National Government, and which will never take place either, because the Railway system is in safe hands as long as the National Party continues to govern.

I want to refer in passing to the hon. member for Yeoville’s attack last year on the hon. the Minister when the Rates Equalization Fund was under discussion here. We then had to hear—and I want to quote from Hansard of 15th August, 1966, on page 743—that the hon. the Minister was afraid to touch the Rates Equalization Fund. Now I am still waiting to hear, during the course of this debate, the hon. member for Yeoville compliment the hon. the Minister on having in fact made use of that Fund, because the present deficit has been made good from the Rates Equalization Fund, but he did so in a way which is beneficial to the country. I do not want to spend much time on statistics, but I want to give you proof of the fact that this Government has looked after the interests of the staff of the S.A. Railways, not only as far as salary increases are concerned, but also as far as housing is concerned. I have the figures here for the period April, 1948 to November 1967. During this period the National Party Government built or purchased 12,393 departmental houses to an amount of R74,096,813. Mr. Speaker, I want to quote an interesting fact here because it has been said in the course of this debate that salary increases were announced shortly before the last election. But if you were to glance at the table on page 82 of the General Manager’s report, it is significant that in the year 1946-’47, under the house-ownership scheme, 1,104 properties were purchases, whereas in the year 1947-’48 the year just before the National Party came into power, 1,250 were purchased. The 1,104 units were constructed at a cost of plus/minus R4 million, and the 1,250 were erected at a cost of approximately R5 million. If you were to go into these figures you would find that that was the greatest amount spent in this respect under the United Party Government, and that it happened before an election, but we heard nothing about that from the Opposition in this debate. These figures prove that the United Party Government, shortly before that election, hurled everything into the struggle to afford the Railway staff a measure of satisfaction, but it availed them nothing. However, when the National Party Government announces salary increases from time to time, then we must hear from the Opposition that it is being done shortly before an election.

Sir, I want to state two points here. In the first instance the hon. members for Durban (Point), Yeoville, Salt River and other Opposition members referred derogatively here to the various salary increases which have been granted from time to time. The hon. member for Randburg has already furnished the House with the overall figure, but you will allow me to furnish the individual amount for each year, because I want to put a very important point in that connection. Here I have a list of salary increases which have been granted from time to time: April, 1951, R10.9 million (cost-of-living allowance); July, 1951, R12.2 million; April 1951, R11.4 million; April, 1953, R5.8 million; and on 15th April we had an election; November, 1954, R1.8 million; April, 1955, R8.2 million; April 1956 (consolidation of cost-of-living allowance), R7.2 million; April 1958 (non-pensionable allowance), R13.1 million (and on 16th April 1958 we had an election); April 1961 (consolidation), R11.5 million (and on 18th October, 1961, we had an election); April 1962 (consolidation) R3.8 million; September, 1962 (rationalization of the wage structure), R17.8 million: November 1964 (vacation bonus), R11.2 million; and in October, 1965, R35 million. The point I want to make here is that these salary increases, etc., were not only granted during an election, before an election and after an election; these increases have been granted throughout, and if hon. members of the Opposition reproach this side of the House that salary increases were granted shortly before an election, then they are implying that the Railwaymen are corruptible, and I shall say that here in this House as well as in my constituency.

They are stating it baldly.

They are stating it baldly, as the hon. member for Parow has said, in spite of the fact that the statistics contradict them. I want to challenge them to stand up and say that that is not the case. Sir, the statistics I mentioned here have proved that the National Party Government has gone from strength to strength.

The second point I want to make in the time at my disposal is in regard to the question of overtime. Opposition members have reproached the Minister and the Management with the fact that too much overtime was being worked. Sir, there is a shortage of staff; I do not want to deny that. But overtime relates to essential services which have to be performed in the interests of the country. The Railways Administration is not the only employer which expects its employees to work overtime. I want to state that if the vacancies in the S.A. Railways are filled and the staff shortage is eliminated entirely, overtime will still not be abolished. It is a well-known fact which nobody can deny, because overtime goes hand-in-hand with certain factors, and those factors the United Party cannot change even if they were to come into power; in fact, the position would deteriorate if they did come into power. One of the factors which goes hand-in-hand with overtime is the number of staff member who are away on vacation. Does the Opposition expect the hon. the Minister and the Management to recruit reserve staff to fill the vacancies when the existing staff go on vacation? Another factor which goes hand-in-hand with overtime is the number of staff members who are ill, the number of staff members on special service, and then there are also unforeseen circumstances. Those are the four important points which have to be taken into consideration when we discuss overtime. I now want to ask hon. member of the Opposition what their policy is, because it is of importance to my constituency. Are they in favour of overtime being abolished? Let them state specifically whether overtime must be abolished in spite of the fact that there is a shortage of staff? No, they will not dare to reply to that question. The hon. member for Yeoville will not reply to it.

He will.

He dare not even address a meeting at Uitenhage. It is a generally known fact that in Railway circles there are usually in any year more former Railway servants who apply to be re-admitted to the Service than the number who have resigned in a comparable period of time. It is a common experience of mine that voters come to me requesting that they be re-employed. The hon. the Minister knows about that.

And they regret having left the Service.

All of them without exception tell you that they were in the employ of the Railways, that they were dismissed or resigned with the purpose of looking for better employment but that they were subsequently worse off. If former Railway servants make a statement like that, then it must be very clear that the Railway Administration is an employer which tries to satisfy everybody. We are quite justified in being proud of the record of the Railways Administration in this regard.

During the course of the debate mention was made here of Railway pensioners. The hon. member for Yeoville also referred in his amendment to the pensioners. I cannot understand how the hon. members of the Opposition can come forward here and complain about the treatment of pensioners. I want to ask the hon. member for Yeoville whether he has ever heard of the Department Benevolent Fund? With what purpose was that fund established? Let me read the aims of the fund to this House. I am quoting from the Controller and Auditor-General’s report on the Accounts of the S.A. Railways Administration for the 1965-’66 financial year—

That is the reason for the Departmental Benevolent Fund being established, and it has been my experience that Railway pensioners, whose financial position left much to be desired as a result of domestic circumstances, have approached me. All of them made applications and they received assistance from the Departmental Benevolent Fund. The hon. the Minister informed the House in his Budget speech that the shortage of staff in certain key grades is relatively serious, and we are aware that that is the case.

The staff of any organization forms the basis of its welfare, and for that reason tribute must be paid on this occasion—and I would be neglecting my duty if I did not do so—to the existing staff who made it possible for the hon. the Minister to keep the wheels rolling. In the light of the fact that the staff is not at full strength, the introduction and the contents of this Budget redounds to the credit of the S.A. Railways. I am convinced that the travelling public, who are the daily clients of the staff, will pay tribute to them and thank them for their loyalty to the Administration. I do so gladly on behalf of my constituency.

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Uitenhage despite the protestation that (I think his words were) “Ek wil nie by die statistiek stilstaan nie”, has rattled off a whole series of figures here this afternoon. In fact at times he sounded, with due respect to him, like a talking computer going haywire. The hon. member said that there are a lot of things that he is prepared to say in his own constituency. He does say a lot of things in his constituency but judging from the immediate past history of struggles and rows in that constituency, I would not say that everything he says there is entirely acceptable to a great number of his electors. He has also gone back a long way into history. I think he went back to approximately 1927 to try to prove various things and he pulled out this old chestnut about rolling stock after the war under a United Party Government. May I remind him that it was just after a war—a major effort. There were other more important things at the time that had to be attended to first before the United Party could get back to the normal needs of peacetime. Despite that they succeeded in keeping the country’s economy going.

I do not want to delve into history in the way that that hon. member has done. I want to return to one or two of the problems of to-day and to this particular Budget. It has been described as a holding operation and it has also been said that perhaps that is a good thing. If I were to agree with that I would agree only in a very negative sense indeed, namely that it is only a good thing compared with the very severe Budget which the hon. the Minister introduced last year and which was anything but a good thing. I think that the attitude of people who think that this is a good Budget is rather like the attitude of a man who has been severly beaten up by somebody else yesterday, and then to-day he is not beaten up again and he is at least grateful in a negative way that he has not been beaten up a second time. Despite the fact that he may still be exceedingly bruised and battered and that he is going to feel the after effects of what happened to him yesterday for a very long time, he is nevertheless grateful for having been left comparatively alone. In the circumstances I think it would be more correct to describe this as a somewhat colourless, insipid and unimaginative Budget because the hon. the Minister has been, to put it mildly, extremely conservative. But he himself has given us reasons for optimism. He said that the prospects for the coming year are encouraging. In his figures his gross deficit from the year’s working is placed at R5.9 million as against the budgeted figure of R9.6 million. In other words, his gross deficit was only about two-thirds of what he had anticipated. He also mentioned that the general buoyancy of the economy was expected to result in an expansion in the gross domestic product in the neighbourhood of 9.2 per cent. He mentioned too the fact that after these years of drought when there have been virtually no exports of maize at all we are going to have something like 2.6 million tons (26 million bags), of maize for export this year. He also mentioned that the recent relaxation of import control would lead and has led to increased imports of merchandise and capital goods and to the building up of essential inventories. He went further and said that in addition the recent rains augur well for the agricultural sector of the economy which should make a valuable contribution in the coming year to Railway revenue. Lastly he said that the volume of products transported through the pipeline was increasing.

In this climate of relative optimism one might have expected the Minister to have made at least some gesture towards undoing some of the harm which he did with those punitive rate increases last year when he gave several turns on the cost-push inflation screw. We on this side of the House criticized the hon. gentleman’s proposals at length last year. I do not wish to cover the same ground again. The Minister has not made one single concession of any size at all in this Budget. I want to ask him whether it is his intention that these cost increases which he imposed last year are to be a permanent feature of our economy. Admittedly, his figures budgeted for a surplus of R473,000. I do not know how accurate that is going to be. The hon. member for Yeoville has mentioned some of the grosser inaccuracies in the budgeting figures in the past. Admittedly if those figures are correct he has not got very much to play with. But surely he could have made a small gesture here and there. For example, the hon. the Minister could perhaps have re-instituted the rebate on livestock railed to agricultural shows. Here is a very modest amount indeed which would only cost the Railway Administration R20.000 per year, still leaving him with a surplus of some R450.000. The stimulus that this rebate used to provide to the livestock industry of the country was out of all proportion to the size of the amount involved. I want to appeal to the Minister to soften his heart in this regard and to reconsider this matter and make this small concession.

The Minister has said that the need to observe the principle of charging what the traffic can bear remains essential and in the interest of the country in general. I think that one can accept this as a general guiding principle, but general guiding principles should not be pushed to extremes in practice. The hon. the Minister has pushed this principle to extremes with the exceptional profits he is making out of that pipeline, profits estimated at R20 million for the year starting on 1st April. In this connection the hon. the Minister should not overlook the fact that a duty has been laid upon him by section 103 of the Constitution which provides that:

With every respect to the hon. the Minister, when he persists in turning the pipeline into an instrument for monopolistic profiteering and at the same time retains his rate increases which he imposed last year on petrol, diesoline and power paraffin conveyed by rail, increases amounting to almost 1c per gallon for petrol, and, over a distance of about 300 miles, of about 40 per cent on diesoline and power paraffin, then I say that he is not having due regard to the agricultural and industrial development within the Republic. The price of petrol and fuel oil is a most important constituent element in the cost structure of virtually every commodity produced in our country. Unless the hon. the Minister reduces the charges for transporting fuel, he is going to contribute materially to the raising of our cost structure at a time when the country is being exhorted by his Government to contain inflation and to keep costs from getting out of hand. In few industries is the price of fuel of more importance than in agriculture. It has a direct bearing on the production costs of the country’s foodstuffs. The Minister’s raising of the tariffs on petroleum fuels last year will have an increasing impact on the price which the consumer will have to pay for his food. It is hardly necessary for me to point out the implications of the rising cost of living when it comes to attempts to stabilize the country’s wage structure in an atmosphere of inflation. It is small wonder that the director of the South African Agricultural Union, when he addressed the South African Association of Business Management in Pretoria, said that increased railway tariffs would act like yeast and make a strong contribution to the inflationary spiral. Railway tariff increases will eventually cost the public two or three times as much as the R50 million they aimed at raising. The hon. the Minister may believe that the users of petrol, dieseline and power paraffin can bear quite a lot; that they are rather like the proverbial camel which can carry a great load of straw made up of a large number of individual straws before his back is broken. But one finds it difficult to accept that the hon. the Minister really believes that some other commodities which I want to mention, on which he raised the rates last year, are being rated on this principle of what the traffic can bear. Does the hon. the Minister really believe for example that the citrus industry can bear the increase, which is approximately an average of 8.6 per cent inland and an average of about 5.9 per cent for export, which was imposed upon it? I want to remind him that for a five-year period before those increases were introduced, the average railage on a pocket of oranges to an inland market was about 11½ cents, leaving a gross return to the grower of only 10 cents per pocket, out of which he still had to meet his production costs and his packing costs. Over and above this, the hon. the Minister increased those rates last year. How on earth can one say that that is charging what the traffic can bear? Does he wonder that the director of the Citrus Exchange protested at a South African Agricultural Union congress, saying that as a result of increased rail rates, many tons of the smaller fruit had to be held back from the export market and directed to the over-loaded and unremunerative local market.

The hon. the Minister should also bear in mind that there are certain commodities, the railage rates on which were fixed at a time when the prices realized for those commodities were very much higher than they are to-day. Wool is a striking example of such a commodity. In the 1950’s, during the wool boom, the rail rate on wool was increased on the grounds that the price of the commodity was high and that it could bear an increased rate. In the meantime the price of wool has dropped approximately to where it was in 1949, but the Minister has not reduced the rail rate correspondingly. On the contrary, he increased the rate on wool last year by an average of some 13 per cent. I want to say to the hon. the Minister that in all seriousness he is to-day charging the wool producers a rate which the traffic can now no longer bear. Due to the steadily increasing production costs, many wool producers would not be making any profit at all, were it not for the good prices at present being realized for what is a by-product of that industry, namely mutton. He should as a matter of justice grant some measure of relief to an industry which, next to gold, is our second largest earner of foreign exchange.

The last example I wish to cite is that of pineapples. The rail and road motor service charges were fixed during the golden years of the pineapple industry, when they were receiving something like R34 or R35 per ton from the canning factories. That rate could in those days be justified as what the traffic could bear. To-day, instead of R34 or R35 per ton, it is down to about R16 per ton, or at the very most R20 per ton, if they are lucky. That is what the grower is getting to-day. Those charges are now far beyond what the traffic can bear.

The road motor service charge, for example, on a ton of pineapples from a place like Peddie to East London is nearly R4 per ton. This amounts to no less than 20 per cent of the grower’s gross remuneration if he is lucky enough to be getting that figure of R20 per ton. I put it to the hon. the Minister that these people have a good case when they plead for relief on the grounds that they are being charged more than the traffic can bear. The Minister, in the course of his speech, drew attention to a very important phenomenon, which has been mentioned again this afternoon. I quote the Ministers’ words:

I can substantiate the truth of the Minister’s words by recounting what is happening in my own constituency. There we have only one naturally occurring mineral of any value, namely high-grade clay, extensive deposits of which are to be found around Grahamstown. Under the present tariff structure, it pays industrialists to rail this clay even to the Witwatersrand, a distance of between 600 and 700 miles, and to process it there, rather than to process it in Grahamstown and rail the finished product to the Reef. The position is aggravated by the attitude of the Railways Administration to requests to the Road Transporation Board to grant applications from private hauliers to transport the fragile products made from this clay, for example very high-grade pottery and chinaware, over distances of more than 200 miles, although the amount of handling required and the incidence of breakages are very much higher in the case of rail than in the case of road transport. I think the Minister will agree that if industry were decentralized to a greater extent than at present, it would contribute towards an appreciable easing of this long-term problem with which the Railways are faced, namely the necessity for carrying a growing proportion of low-rated traffic and a falling proportion of high-rated traffic. But the Administration’s policy itself militates in certain respects against a proper decentralization of industry. Despite the provision of section 103 of the Constitution, which I have already quoted, the Railways, before they will consent to build a new line, demand from the users of the proposed line a guarantee against loss in respect of its working. This policy is a very far cry indeed from the original idea that one of the functions of the Railways was to develop the country, and it is in fact a restriction which bears very heavily on the inland areas, particularly of the Cape Province, because in those areas one has a very small population scattered over long distances. As a result, the people of the central, northern and north-western Cape have to rely to a great extent either upon private road motor transport or upon the road motor services of the Administration. Those road motor services are an integral part of our State transport services and they operate in fact as feeder services for the Railways. But despite this the Minister has not seen fit to change his policy of insisting that the road motor services must pay for themselves as a separate unit. The position is aggravated by the fact that tariffs on the road motor services are considerably higher than on the Railways, instead of being the same. The result is that on many R.M.S. routes farmers find it cheaper, because of the higher charges of the road motor services, to convey their produce and requirements on their own lorries or on their own trailers, rather than use the road motor services. That particular service then shows a loss, and the Administration withdraws it on the grounds that it is uneconomic.

The report of the Schumann Committee was very specific in its recommendations for closer conformity between road and rail rates. On page 114 of the report of the Committee one finds the following—

Last year, on the 10th of August, the Minister said that the recommendation that road transport rates for goods traffic be reduced on a selective basis will have to stand over temporarily. He went on to say (Hansard col. 489)—

I hope that when the hon. gentleman replies he will give the House some indication of when that Commission will in fact report. Because Sir, this is becoming a matter of urgency. As I said, the refusal of the Railways to build new lines except against a guarantee, allied to the high road motor service charges, is militating against the development of certain areas. Has the time not in any case arrived for the Minister to take a commercial risk in this matter and to lower road motor charges and see whether it will not result in the public patronizing these road services better, thereby enabling more of the services to show a profit?

I now want to deal with certain matters in connection with the East London harbour. The Minister said yesterday that it was anticipated that we would be exporting some 26 million bags of maize this year. This will, of course, earn us valuable foreign exchange. Although East London will not be the only port used, one presumes that a very large proportion of these exports will be routed through East London. The new rail link with that harbour will be operating in June, and the very fine new maize elevator at the harbour started operating last week. The question I want to put to the Minister is this. Is he satisfied that the harbour itself can cope with the very heavy demands that are going to be made upon it now that that elevator is in operation? We know that the tendency as regards ships engaged in the grain trade is for bigger and bigger ships to be used; more and more bulk carriers are being used, and as the years go by they increase in size. One of the things that suffers because of the increase in size is, sometimes, the ships’ manoeuvrability.

There have been cases of vessels having difficulty in entering the East London harbour mouth, because under certain conditions of wind, weather and tide, they tend to be carried past the mouth in an easterly direction. It has been reported that one ship actually bumped the bottom of the river at the mouth of the harbour. On page 91 of the Capital Estimates there is an amount which is described as: “Widening the turning basin and improving the entrance to the harbour.” I am aware that that is something which has been under way for a long time. Nevertheless, I want to ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that when these improvements are in fact completed the harbour will then be able to play its full role as a major export port for grain for the foreseeable future.

There is also another matter in connection with the East London harbour which I hope is engaging the Minister’s attention. If one adds the tonnage of cargo shipped from ports to the tonnage of cargoes discharged at ports in the course of last year, one finds that during the past year all the harbours, except East London, registered an increase. Admittedly during the previous year unusually large quantities of steel had been imported through East London. Nevertheless, it does seem as though East London is being under-utilized. The Railways can obviously not afford to be complacent about this state of affairs. They cannot afford to allow the trucks, which will take those heavy maize exports to East London, to return to the hinterland empty. The problem is accentuated by the fact that congestion occurs at Durban harbour. In this regard I want to quote from the Rand Daily Mail of the 5th of January—

This congestion at Durban has been occurring at a time when East London, according to the Chairman of their Industrial Development Committee, has only been operating at about 35-40 per cent of its capacity. According to that gentleman, part of the trouble is that the ocean freight rates to East London and Durban are the same, namely basic plus 35 cents a ton.

It is probably generally accepted that the spirit displayed in this debate by the Opposition is so dead and that we should deduce from that by implication that they really cannot do much to these truly neat Estimates, as I want to call them. They ransacked these Estimates in an attempt to find something in them, but in actual fact they came up with nothing. Even the hon. member for Yeoville, the main speaker or the main mischief-maker on the other side, and the hon. member for Durban (Point), who normally takes a very active part and to a certain extent allows himself to be carried away by matters, could not become excited here. That proves that this Budget really complies with the requirements of a model Budget in these times in which the South African economy finds itself and under these circumstances. What hon. members on the other side are doing, appears to me to be very much like stone-throwing by people who are living in glass houses, because, if their Leader bad to introduce Estimates for the political train of the United Party, one cannot but wonder where he would have obtained his figures. What is very clear, is that the staff of that political train is dwindling rapidly. Involuntarily one thinks of the main speakers in Railway Debates of the past, and then one wonders where they are. There were people such as Mr. Russell, the former member for Wynberg, Mr. Eaton, the former member of Umhlatuzana. Mr. Plewman, the former member for Port Elizabeth (South), and Mr. Hickman, the former member for Maitland. So we can continue and it so happens that we have another name here, that of Mr. Durrant, the member for Turffontein. Therefore, if the Leader of the Opposition had to draw up Estimates for the political train of the United Party, I really think that it may perhaps be something worth listening to, something which will contribute to the pleasant atmosphere of this House.

In the main hon. members of the Opposition made a few general remarks. The first was that these Estimates were based on guess-work. That was done by the hon. member for Yeoville. The second was that the S.A. Railways did not render a contribution to the national growth of the country and the economy, and the third was that the Minister and these Estimates did not contribute their share in combating inflation; fourthly, they objected to the amount in the Rates Equalization Fund and, fifthly, reflections were cast on the productivity of the S.A. Railways and it was said that this transport system had to be smartened up.

It is really impossible to be accurate to the nearest cent in Estimates of R730 million, because one finds in the Railways that circumstances change tremendously during the financial year. These Estimates are drawn up in respect of the revenue and the expenditure of the Railways for the period of one year. As far as the revenue is concerned, it is obtained from passenger and goods traffic. Everybody who knows South African conditions will realize that it is very difficult to make a correct estimate of the revenue which will be obtained from passenger and goods traffic; and, secondly, that expenditure in respect of capital works, betterments, renewals and salaries also varies according to circumstances. For that reason the Opposition is not justified in raising objections to these Estimates. On the contrary, one would have expected them to congratulate the Minister on his Estimates of R730 million being so nearly correct. I think that it redounds to the credit of the Minister and his staff that they presented Estimates of those dimensions and that they were able to be so nearly correct in their calculations.

The second accusation made by the Opposition was that the transport system did not contribute its share in respect of the economic growth of this country. But I want to claim that the revival in our economy during the past years would not have been possible if it had not been for this national transport system, since this system is efficient, has a sound basis and goes hand in hand with the economic development in this country. The extent and the rate of development in this country as well as the extent and the rate of development on the Railways, go hand in hand and they influence each other. One will not have any economic development if one’s transport system does not keep pace with the demands which are being made. However, coupled with these demands which are made upon it, there are also certain other requirements, namely that this transport system should be inexpensive as well as efficient, and this inexpensive, fast and efficient transport system makes it possible to produce more goods and at lower prices. This transport system comes up to the requirements for this development. In the past we mainly had agricultural development, and from there it went to agricultural-mining development, and after that we had agricultural-mining-industrial development. Especially under the present régime this transport system has kept pace with the development in the country, to such an extent that at present we have to combat inflation as a result of this spectacular development. The transport system has not only kept pace with those needs, but also with modern needs. Hence the fact that the Airways has expanded, that a pipeline was constructed and that it is very likely that nuclear power will be used in future. To me that is proof that the criticism of the Opposition is not justified, because they cannot prove that the transport system in South Africa has not kept pace with the economic development and, secondly, has not contributed its share in respect of this development.

Then we find that hon. members on the other side objected to the fact that the transport system did not consist of the S.A. Railways only; they want the pipeline and the Airways to be separate from the Railways. I want to counter that by saying that one’s transport system should form a unit so that it may meet the needs of this country and its development, because the transport system forms the basis for providing what is necessary and meeting the needs of the country. In this way the Airways and the pipeline had their origins in this S.A. Railways and Harbours, as it was known previously.

The second aspect raised by the Opposition was that this transport system, and the Minister in particular, did not contribute its share in respect of combating inflation in this country. In a very fine speech the hon. member for Parow explained to us yesterday that through our system of tariffs a real effort was being made to combat inflation; because, as he put it, the object of this system of tariffs should be to assist in stimulating economic development in all spheres, but should be subject to commercial principles. I think we should take that into account. I am thinking of the hon. member for Green Point who pleaded here for the Western Province. According to their policy the revenue from low tariff transport is too little and the revenue from high tariff transport is too high. I really do not know whether those hon. members know what they are asking for. It actually amounts to the fact that low tariffs should be raised, and that will increase production costs and make for inflation. What are the needs of the Western Province? One item which is necessary here is coal, and that is one of the low tariff goods, and when we raise the tariff on coal it will increase production costs. Therefore, if these hon. members insist on low tariffs being raised in order to obtain more revenue from low tariff traffic, they are in actual fact promoting inflation. This tariff policy is being laid down in such a way that the general tariff policy has to be determined in accordance with commercial principles. That is why it is essential that judicious, differentiated tariffs should be applied in such a way that they may be spread equitably over all individuals and that the various sectors of the national economy may be stimulated in the best way. That is the tariff policy which is being pursued and which assists in combating inflation in this country.

The second observation made in respect of the combating of inflation … [Interjection.] The point I am trying to make is that because transport forms part of the production or of the production process, or of the transportation of certain basic raw materials, an effective transport system and a differentiated system of tariffs can be of direct assistance in keeping down the total production costs and therefore also the price of products. That is the contribution made by our national transport system towards combating inflation—by keeping the prices of consumer goods as low as possible. That is not only in respect of the transportation of basic raw materials, but also in respect of the transportation of agricultural produce and food.

The hon. member for Albany complained about livestock and that the Railways was doing nothing to encourage the production of livestock. His request was that the freight payable in respect of animals which were taken to agricultural shows, should be subsidized. But what is really being done at present? For the transportation of animals there is one of the cheapest tariffs. The tariffs for conveying animals to markets are low and they were not raised last year. That contributed to the prices of food being kept low. If we were to push up the basic prices of food by raising these low tariffs, the consumer would be affected most by such a step. I think that hon. members on the other side should be consistent when they make such requests in this House. They should pause and consider the consequences of such requests before they make them. What is important is not only cheaper transportation, but also faster transportation of perishable produce, because that contributes to perishable produce reaching their destination in a good condition so that there is much less waste, and these factors also have a favourable effect on the final price. The other respect in which transport in this country is contributing its share in keeping down production costs and thereby combating inflation, is the transportation of labourers to the factories where the manufactured articles are made. If we look up the statistics, we find that the Railways is responsible for providing most of the transport for people who go to work, and that it is providing cheap transport whereby it contributes its share to combating inflation.

Another respect in which our national transport system contributes to combating inflation and keeping down the cost of products, is the effective way in which the Railways is being administered. Here I think that the Minister and his staff deserve a pat on the back and a special word of thanks for the way in which they administer this transport system and plan ahead. I do not want to go into the statistics in detail in order to prove this, and this has already been mentioned by other hon. members, but briefly I just want to quote a few statistics to show how productive the Railways is, because this is one of the aspects which was mentioned by hon. members on the other side, namely that we should increase the productivity of the S.A. Railways. This is, on the contrary, exactly what has happened over the past years. The productivity has been increased. We find that the tonnage of goods conveyed annually has increased from 90 million to more than 106 million over the past five years, and we find that the establishment only increased by 5.3 per cent over the same period of five years. Similarly I can quote to you statistics to prove that the service which is being rendered, the more extensive service which is being rendered, has been rendered with a smaller staff, and this could only be achieved as a result of increased productivity.

I should like to refer to our Airways which has its origins in a sound transport system in this country and which is an indication to me that there is advance planning. We are meeting the increasing demand for air transport. Our passenger traffic over the past few years has increased so tremendously that we have an international air service at present; we also have regional as well as domestic services. Passenger traffic on the Springbok route has shown a 37.3 per cent increase in respect of northward journeys and a 41 per cent increase in respect of southward journeys. On the Wallaby service passenger traffic increased by 44 per cent. As far as our domestic services are concerned, there has been an increase of 19 per cent in the standard class services and an increase of 30 per cent in the Skycoach services. In addition I just want to refer to the fact that over the past five years we have had an increase of 76 per cent as regards passenger journeys; our freight ton-miles increased by 64 per cent. The White staff increased by 26 per cent and the non-White staff by 20 per cent. Over the past five years the aircrew has increased by only 3 per cent, and the engineering staff has, as a matter of fact, remained constant, and that is the case in spite of the fact that there has been an increase of 17 per cent in the number of hours flown, and an increase of 45 per cent in the number of miles flown. If these statistics do not prove clearly that the productivity of our transport system has been adapted to the circumstances and increased, then I do not know what they prove.

Then I should like to refer to the pipeline. What did this pipeline from Durban to Johannesburg effect? It did not only effect a constant flow of petroleum products to meet the domestic needs and to stimulate the production of agricultural goods by having made available a constant flow of requisites, but it also effected a tremendous saving in respect of the transport system as a whole. It used to cost 1.536c to convey one gallon of petrol from the coast to Johannesburg; now, with the pipeline, it only costs .92c, i.e. a saving of .643c. It has also brought about relief in connection with train traffic, relief which amounts to four trains a day, in both directions, from Durban to Ladysmith, and two trains a day, in both directions, from Ladysmith to Germiston. This planning for the purpose of meeting the transport needs of South Africa and coping with the economic growth of the country, redounds to the credit of the South African Railways, the hon. the Minister, his Deputy Minister as well as the Railway staff, and I do not think that hon. members of the Opposition had any right to level any criticism against these Estimates. I do not think that they did justice to themselves, and I want to predict that the criticism they raised here today, will once again back-fire on them as it did in the past.

The hon. member who has just sat down has indicated that all is well in the Railway Administration. It is quite obvious, however, that all is not well with the Railway Administration when one looks at the shortage of manpower which is being experienced in the Railway service. Surely if the conditions of service were so good and if all was well there would be long waiting-lists of applicants for employment in the railway service. But what do we find? We find that there are far more vacancies than applicants. We find that the Minister is almost dependent upon the re-employment of railway pensioners and married women in order to fill his vacancies. Although there have been improvements in the conditions of service, it would appear that much still remains to be done so as to attract the manpower required by the hon. the Minister.

Sir, I wish to refer to one particular aspect of the manpower position as it affects the railway pensioner. We know that the hon. the Minister is bound by the decisions of the Cabinet; we know that he is bound by decisions made by the Minister of Social Welfare and Pensions as far as civil pensioners are concerned and we know that he is guided by the reports of his actuaries in regard to the Superannuation Fund, but it is an irrefutable fact that the railway pensioners and widows of ex-railwaymen look to this hon. Minister for some alleviation of the difficult position in which they find themselves as a result of the increase in the cost of living. According to the latest figures furnished by the hon. the Minister there are 23,771 railway pensioners and 9,621 widow pensioners, making a total of 33,392 people. Sir, these people and their dependants are having an extremely difficult time in making ends meet. The hon. member for Yeoville, in an important leg of his amendment, specifically asks that assistance be given to railway pensioners. Sir, it is significant that large numbers of hon. members opposite who have participated in this debate have not dealt with this leg of the amendment, and I think that is indicative of the fact that many hon. members opposite realize that there is still a great deal to be done to assist the railway pensioner and the widow of the railwayman Sir, I believe that every single member of this House receives representation from time to time from railway pensioners for assistance of some kind. We know that war veterans’ pensions were previously administered by the Department of Social Welfare and Pensions and that the pensions section of the Railway Administration has now taken over the administration of war veterans’ pensions as far as railway pensioners are concerned. Under the new administrative arrangements whereby these pensions are supplemented it has become increasingly important that the welfare of these pensioners should be placed in the hands of this hon. Minister. Sir, the hon. member for Yeoville has indicated the difficulties which are being experienced, particularly by the older railway pensioner. When we look at the facts and figures we find that those persons who retired from the railway service many years ago receive a lower basic pension. These people, who can truly be regarded as pioneers of the railway service of to-day, find themselves in the most difficult position as a result of the rise in the cost of living. The basic pensions of railway pensioners were last increased on 1st April, 1959. We know that since then certain concessions have been made by the Government to the railway pensioners and we give the Government due credit for that. The railway pensioners are obviously grateful for these concessions. The fact remains, however, that the basic pensions have remained unaltered since 1st April, 1959. We know that from time to time the railway pensioners have been granted temporary allowances, supplementary allowances and bonuses, but it is obvious that the time has come that the hon. the Minister should give serious consideration to the whole question of revising the basic pension which is being paid to these pensioners.

In certain other institutions we know that the pensions payable to former employees are regularly revised to compensate for the reduced purchasing power of their money resulting from inflation. In the Durban Municipality, for instance, there is an arrangement whereby basic pensions payable from the Durban Municipal Superannuation Fund are revised and increased. I think the last increase was 10 per cent. What is the position of the railway pensioner? Take the case of an artisan who retired after 40 years’ service and who was in receipt of the maximum salary during the last seven years of his service. If that artisan retired in December, 1958, he receives a maximum basic pension of R60 per month. On the other hand, an artisan with the same service who retired on 31st December, 1966, receives a basic pension of R95 per month. A Grade II clerk with the same service who retired on 31st December, 1958, to-day receives a basic pension of R56 per month. A second grade clerk with the same service, however, who retired on 31st December, 1966, to-day receives a basic pension of R82 per month. This disparity in the basic pension payable to railway pensioners is a matter which gives the older pensioners grave cause for concern, and that is why the hon. member for Yeoville specifically asks in the second leg of his amendment that these pensioners should be assisted. This question of pensions and the erosive effects of inflation are matters which cause a great deal of concern to the present staff of the Railway service. Obviously when they hear of the difficulties experienced by railway pensioners they themselves begin to doubt what is to become of them when they retire at some future date. We know that the Government has introduced a scheme whereby a temporary allowance is paid to certain railway pensioners. This temporary allowance is a great bone of contention amongst certain of the railway pensioners who have lost their temporary allowance. When we look at the history of this temporary allowance we find that it has remained static since 1st April, 1964.

In order to qualify for this allowance the pensioners have to satisfy a means test. We find that there are many railway pensioners who wish to take up employment in the private sector. I have already mentioned that there are 33,392 railway pensioners and widow pensioners, according to a reply to a question which was put in this House on 21st February, 1967. The Hon. the Minister indicated in the same reply that 29,130 of the pensioners were receiving a temporary allowance. In other words, 4,262 of the 33,392 are not receiving this temporary allowance. Sir, we have heard a great deal in this debate about productivity. Here we have a large number of people who can still be productive in our economy and I believe that the Government should give them every encouragement to take up employment. Many of these pensioners feel that they are being discriminated against, particularly when there are no suitable posts available in the Railway Administration. They find that they cannot make ends meet on their pension and they wish to supplement their pension by taking up employment in the private sector. I feel that the hon. the Minister should give very serious consideration to the question of raising the means test ceiling so far as these people are concerned. Administratively it would be easier for the hon. the Minister to consolidate this temporary allowance with the basic pension. If this is not possible then I would urge him to reconsider the question of raising the means test ceiling.

Business interrupted in accordance with Standing Order No. 92.

Hon. members may be interested to hear that the aircraft Rietbok has been located by a minesweeper in 180 feet of water. The sea is still too rough to send down divers, but as soon as it has subsided divers will in fact be sent down.

To-day I am in the fortunate position of being able for the first time to congratulate the hon. member for Yeoville on the sensible speech by him. I think it is one of the most sensible speeches made by the hon. member since the mantle of Russell fell on his shoulders. In his speech yesterday the hon. member made no untrue allegations; he was not provocative; the criticism he expressed was quite obvious. He did do a bit of politicizing by telling us once again about all the fine schemes of the late Mr. Sturrock. I grant him that, because there is so little else left to console them. For that reason I grant him this mite. It seems the lessons I have been trying to teach the hon. member for the past years, the instruction I gave him, have at last borne fruit. In fact, after the hon. member for Yeoville had finished his speech, I realized for the first time what a good Budget this was, so much so that “even the ranks of Tuscany could scarce forbear to cheer”.

Once again the hon. member saddled an old nag, however, one which has become hackneyed through the years. I am referring to his allegation of inaccurate estimating. We have been hearing this allegation for the past 19 years—in fact, we also levelled that charge against the then Minister of Transport when we were on the opposite side of the House. That is inevitable. It is inherent in the nature of an undertaking like the Railways system, which is so closely bound up with the economic fluctuations in the country, that an accurate estimate can never be made. Estimates are influenced by economic factors in the country; they depend on the quantity of traffic offered for transportation; they depend on increased or decreased expenditure which cannot be anticipated. For that reason I fear that it will always be the position that estimates will not tally to the last cent. As I have said, however, this is one of the old issues raised by the hon. member, an issue which has been persistently raised as long as there has been a Minister of Transport in Parliament.

The hon. member also said that the Estimates contained no indication of the contribution made by the Railways to the fight against inflation. Unfortunately the hon. member gave no indication of the provision in this regard which in his opinion should have been contained in the Estimates. There is, for example, the possibility of a decrease in capital expenditure, a remedy recommended by many businessmen. They advocate a reduction in the capital expenditure of the Government, in this case the Railways. By those means, they contend, inflation may be combated. The hon. member for Yeoville, however, was wise enough not to advocate that. On the contrary, he said that he quite agreed with the proposed increased capital expenditure, expenditure which is essential if the Railways is to keep abreast of the development of the country. To enable the Railways to do so, large capital expenditure has to be incurred. Another solution, of course, is to decrease wages. That is a most effective way of combating inflation. But the hon. member will not agree to that. The hon. member will not advocate that, and in any event it will not be accepted by this side of the House. In actual fact the hon. member pleaded for an increase in wages and pension benefits. If those were granted, on the other hand, they would foster inflation. They would accelerate the pace of inflation, a pace which is very low at the moment. Then the hon. member asked for a reduction in the transportation charges on petroleum products. In this regard he referred to the pipeline. But if that were done it would mean that that loss would simply have to be recovered from the transportation of other commodities. In other words, it would entail an increase in rates. If I were to reduce the revenue from the transportation of petroleum products by RIO million, for example, it would mean that this loss would have to be recovered from the transportation of other products. If rates were to be increased as a result of that, it would further inflation rather than curb or combat it. But that is typical of the United Party: they are always calling for increased expenditure, and at the same time for reduced revenue.

A great deal has been said about the increase in the cost of living. Nobody will deny that there has been an increase. I contend, however, that the Railways Administration is doing its share, if not in reducing the cost of living then at least in curbing it. I want to give the House some examples of this. At the time of the general tariff increases last year, no increased tariffs were introduced on the transportation of livestock—one of the major sources of food and at the same time the item which is most subject to price increases. Nevertheless, the tariffs in this regard were not increased. In fact, the average tariff increases on flour, butter, cheese, eggs and vegetables represented less than per cent of the value of those products. By means of this sensible rates policy the Railways Administration has therefore contributed its share towards preventing the increase in the cost of living from getting out of hand. It did its share in countering it. But the Railways Administration made a large contribution in this regard, particularly in the field of housing. I want to record some facts in this regard, in order that not only this House but also the public outside may know what service the Railways Administration is rendering to its workers and consequently to the country as a whole, and in order that they may see what a large contribution the Railways Administration is making towards curbing the cost of living. More than 61 per cent of the married male staff live in departmental rented houses or dwellings, dwellings acquired with the aid of loans. At the moment there are 23,096 departmental rented houses with a rent rate which is 50 per cent lower than in the case of similar privately owned houses. The Railways Administration spends an annual amount of R8 million on house rentals— something which may be regarded as a subsidy to the officials. In addition, 11,184 employees live in houses purchased by means of 100 per cent loans at a rate of interest of 4 per cent, a rate of interest which in the case of building societies is at present 8½ per cent. In addition, 7,694 employees live in houses purchased by means of 10 per cent loans. During the past ten years 8,748 departmental rented houses were provided and 18,054 dwellings were purchased under the house ownership scheme. For unmarried personnel there are 32 hostels, which provide accommodation for 3,938 employees. The board paid by them is subsidized by the Administration to the extent of approximately R644,000 a year. In addition, the necessary provision is made for accommodation for non-Whites. I may therefore justly claim that the Railways Administration is doing its share to see to it that there is not an undue and exorbitant increase in the cost of living. In fact, the contribution made by the Administration is a particularly valuable one in this regard.

The hon. member for Yeoville and also other hon. members alleged that the increase in the cost of living had completely wiped out the increase in wages granted 18 months ago. Amongst other things the hon. member quoted with relish what was said by a certain Mr. Botha. He was firmly under the impression that Mr. Botha was a leader of a Railways staff association, just like the hon. member over there. I then corrected him, and he was most upset about that. Why the hon. member quoted this gentleman, heaven alone knows. Why? He saw the words “salaried association”, and then thought it was the salaried association of the Railways. Did the hon. member not think that?

No, I did not think that.

Then I accept that he did not think that.

Mr. Speaker, what are the facts? According to the latest available figures—I am now taking the period since November, 1964, i.e. since the holiday bonus was granted to railwaymen—the increase in the cost of living has been 7.7 per cent. That is according to the latest figures. The percentage increase in Railways wages, including the holiday bonus, has been 15.23 per cent since 1964. Now where did hon. members hear the story that the increase in the cost of living had completely wiped out that increase in wages? Of course that is not so, and here are the proofs. The increase in wages, including the holiday bonus, is 15.23 per cent, as against an increase of 7.7 per cent in the cost of living. The hon. member spoke about productive bargaining instead of collective bargaining. I am not quite sure what he meant by that, nor does he himself know what he meant by that. The hon. member is so eloquent that he uses fine words devoid of all meaning. Mr. Speaker, surely productivity lies at the root of all negotiations on increasing wages and improving working conditions. That is generally accepted by all the employers. That is by no means new. It is always said that when there is to be an increase in wages it should be accompanied by an increase in productivity. That is elementary. Unfortunately, however, that does not always happen. It is one of the weaknesses in our system that despite the fact that it is demanded by the employer, that increase in productivity does not always materialize. That is phrased in very general terms. In an organization like the Railways, with its divergent activities, it is very difficult to determine what the increase in productivity shall be in respect of each grade. I want to tell the hon. member that one of the major methods of increasing productivity is that of incentive wages or bonus work. It is applied where possible. In all the workshops of the Railways bonus systems are in operation. They are expanded wherever possible. In reply to the hon. member for Parktown, who spoke about increased efficiency, I want to say the following: It is done. One of the methods by which it is done is mechanization, which increases both efficiency and productivity. I now want to give some examples of what has been done and of what is being done. The first relates to central traffic control. New signal systems have been introduced. This brings about a saving in manpower and efficiency is increased. The second is the mechanization of railway lines maintenance, in respect of which there is a tremendous saving of manpower. At the same time it should be accompanied by an increase in efficiency. Then there is also the mechanization of station accounts. This again means a saving in manpower with an increase in efficiency. Then there is the use of electronic computers, the mechanization of warehouses, the continual introduction of the most modern equipment in the workshops, the electrification and dieselization of railway lines, and numerous others. The hon. member for Parktown spoke as though this was something quite new, and as though no attempts at efficiency were made on the Railways. But before hon. members speak up they should make some enquiries. Then they will ascertain what is really happening.

We now come to the pipeline, in respect of which the hon. member for Parktown also had so much to say. What are the facts with regard to this oil pipeline from Durban to the Rand? The anticipated surplus, as the hon. members said, amounts to R14,422,000 for 1966-’67. For 1967-’68 it amounts to R19,987,000. What they omitted saying was that if there had been no pipeline and those petroleum products had been transported by the Railways, the surplus for last year would have been R10,900,000, i.e., only R3.5 million less than it actually is as a result of conveyance through the pipeline. For next year it will be R16 million, which is R4 million less than it would have been. But as long as one of the important principles of rates determination is “what the traffic can bear”, this will be the case with all high tariff traffic. The hon. members should know that profits are made on all high tariff traffic. Why should the petroleum products be excepted for a reduction in the transportation charges whilst this is not done on the other heads of the traffic? Surely it goes without saying that those profits have to be utilized to offset the losses on the transportation of other articles which are essential but which cannot carry high tariffs. This principle is by no means peculiar to the South African Railways. It is an accepted principle on all the railway systems of the world, namely that the principle of what the traffic can bear is applied to a large extent, regardless of direct transportation costs, etc. This is one of the major principles. Now I do not know why there should be a reduction in the tariff on petroleum products conveyed through the pipeline, and not on other high tariff goods. As I said, if that were to happen that money would surely have to be recovered by increasing the transportation rates on other products. It will most certainly not be in the interests of the country if the tariffs on other essential articles were to be increased in order that the motorists on the Witwatersrand could have cheaper petrol. I give some examples of the losses which these profits have to offset. There is the coal which is transported to the Western Cape. The hon. member for Green Point had a great deal to say on how the Western Cape was neglected. If I were to apply the principle of direct charges plus surcharges to the transportation of coal, what would become of the industries in the Western Cape? They would all go to the Witwatersrand. This, however, is one of the losses that has to be offset by the profits made on the high tariff goods.

Why must it be offset by that?

I shall tell you why. I shall come to the hon. member’s suggestion in a moment, namely that the Consolidated Revenue Fund should meet those losses, which is a quite frivolous idea, as I shall demonstrate in a moment. I am referring to the transportation of vegetables, which is an essential article and which is transported at a loss. I am going to mention only two. The second is the passenger services, on which it is estimated that there will be a loss of R53 million for the next year. In order to meet these losses, it is essential that large profits shall be made on high tariff goods.

Now I come to another point, however, and that is that the hon. member for Yeoville advocates—which is also a new policy of the United Party—that the entrepreneur should have the right to choose his own form of transport. In other words, there will be unrestricted competition by road transportation. What will be the consequences? All the high tariff traffic, from 51 per cent of the Railways, revenue derives, will be transported by road. In the past the United Party adopted the attitude that there should in fact be control. There should be relaxation of restrictions, but there should not be unrestricted road transportation. Now, however, they have produced a new policy, namely unrestricted road transportation, because the hon. member says that the entrepreneur should have the right to choose his own form of transport.

That will not last long. They will get another policy.

Yes, until the next Budget, I suppose. Then the hon. member said that the Railways should have the sole right to transport certain commodities. Naturally these will always be low tariff commodities, which the Railways is already transporting because the private conveyancer is not interested in them. Bear in mind the losses on articles which are at present transported at a loss, for example the instance mentioned by the hon. member, namely coal to Cape Town. There are also the losses on passenger services, which total R53 million. According to the member all these losses, which will have to be met as a result of the loss of all the high tariff traffic and which will be more than a few hundred million rand, should be borne by the Consolidated Revenue Fund. That is his solution. In other words, the taxpayer of the country has to bear those losses. If at the end of the year, for example, I could merely send an account to Treasury for any eventual losses and say, “Pay up”, I would have no worries about balancing my Budget. That would be very pleasant indeed. If that can be done, why should there be attempts at saving on the Railways? Why should there be higher productivity? Surely there would then be no incentive, because if losses occurred, Treasury would pay. Why should I say “no” to claims by the staff for increased wages, better salaries and improved working conditions? All these could simply be granted, because Treasury would pay. It is a new principle which these hon. gentlemen seek to introduce, namely that Treasury, the Central Government, the Consolidated Revenue Fund, should be responsible for all Railways losses. Then private undertakings would get free road transportation, as the hon. member wishes, and higher tariffs could either be abolished altogether or could be reduced, because Treasury would pay every year. Now the hon. member says that that is in fact done. According to him it is already the policy because the Government is subsidizing the transportation of the Bantu to their residential areas. But that is something quite different. [Interjection.] If the hon. member would cease his inane laughing and listen, he would hear why he is wrong. Here the Central Government is in exactly the same position as a private undertaking which asks for the construction of railway-lines. The railway-line built to Fisons has to be guaranteed against any losses. The railway-line built to Hotazel was guaranteed against all losses. The Post-masburg railway-line was guaranteed against any losses by those private persons. In this case it was Government policy that if the Railways builds uneconomic railway-lines with a view to the, implementation of Government policy with regard to the settlement of Bantu in certain areas, the Government, just like the private man, should meet the losses on such undertakings. It is a completely different principle, however, when it is pleaded that the Consolidated Revenue Fund should bear the responsibility for all losses incurred by the Railways. I say it would be a fatal principle. In fact, it would be the worst principle that could possibly be introduced.

One other issue was raised by the hon. members, and that related to pensioners. The hon. member asked for an increase in pensions. The hon. member knows that basic pensions cannot be increased at will. Basic pensions can be increased only if there is a recommendation by the actuaries and it is approved by the Superannuation Board—on which the staff is represented. Unless it is done in that way, the basic pensions cannot be increased. What was in fact done is that pensioners are given allowances, allowances which are increased from time to time. Those allowances are not taken from the Superannuation Fund but from Railways Revenue. A means test is applied in respect of the payment of allowances. Allow me to say that I am most sympathetic towards the pensioners. It is a question of finances, however, i.e. whether or not we can afford higher allowances. At this juncture the Railways finances cannot afford to meet any increase.

The hon. member also asked that the means test be raised. That cannot be done either, because it would cost a few million rand, i.e. if that test were abolished, which would in any event be an unsound principle. One point should always be borne in mind, and that is that whilst the means test is fixed at R150 a month, there are thousands of railwaymen who are in full-time Railway employment and who earn much less than R150 a month. That should be borne in mind when raising the means test is mooted.

The hon. member also referred to the sick-fund levies to be paid by pensioners. That is something which was introduced by the Sick-fund Board. As hon. members know, the sick-fund is controlled by the staff themselves and not by the Minister. In fact, the Minister has no say in it. The Sick-fund Board decided that such levies were to be introduced for a probationary period of 12 months, in an attempt to curb expenditure and prevent abuse. I am referring to levies on visits to doctors and on prescriptions issued by doctors. They added, however, that if there were cases of hardship as a result of that, they were prepared to give favourable consideration to such cases. I am quite convinced that where people are genuinely unable to afford the levies the Board would be prepared to meet such cases.

†The hon. member for Parktown said, by implication, that tariffs should not have been raised last year. The hon. member for Yeoville was much more sensible, because he did not say that. He opposed the increase in tariffs last year, but in his speech this year during the course of this debate he did not say a word about the increase in tariffs.

I said that I stood by what I had said, namely that they were wrong at the time.

Oh, yes. Well, let me say then that the hon. member was not so sensible —apparently he supported the hon. member for Parktown. What would the position be if tariffs had not been increased? The balance in the Rates Equalization Fund is approximately R41 million. That was the figure at the beginning of the year, the calendar year. The deficit this year would be R32 million if tariffs had not been increased in September. The estimated deficit next year would be R45½ million if tariffs had not been increased. The total deficit for the two years would therefore be R75½ million. The Rates Equalization Fund would have shown a credit balance of R41 million. That would leave a debit balance of about R34 million. Apparently the hon. member considers that to be good business!

It is very good business.

Will the hon. member then tell me where the R3½ million must come from? Must it come from the Consolidated Revenue Fund, as his colleague suggested?

Father Christmas will give it.

The Prime Minister suggests that Father Christmas might help, The hon. member for Parktown gave an interesting breakdown of the working results of the different branches of Railway operations. He dealt with the Railways, Harbours, Airways and pipelines. He said that the Railways were operating at a loss. There is no secret about that, of course. Any intelligent person who looks at the figures can immediately see what The losses of the railway operations are, apart from harbours, airways and pipelines. Separate l accounts are kept for the different branches. If the hon. member is anxious for me to deal with that in my Budget every year, I am quite prepared to do so. I am quite willing to give the figures separately. That is one of the reasons why I am not prepared to accept the suggestions that are continually being made, namely that airways, harbours, pipelines and railways should be divorced from one another, and stand separately each one on its own feet. It is for the purpose of utilizing the profits made by the other branches to cover the losses incurred by the Railways that I am not prepared to agree to the separation of the different branches of the Administration. The hon. member wanted to know how the losses incurred by the Railways itself can be eliminated. Well, that can very easily be done. I can increase rates and tariffs, and I can increase passenger fares. I can also eliminate all un-remunerative rates, namely the transport of agricultural products, coal to Cape Town, raw materials for manufacturers. I can also withdraw main line passenger trains, as is being done in the U.S.A. It must, however, be remembered that those railway companies are private undertakings and they operate on a profit basis. They are withdrawing all their main line passenger trains because of the fact that they are unremunerative—they do not pay. Does the hon. member want the S.A. Railways to do that? What will the public reaction be if a State undertaking were not prepared to give the public the service which they require? The loss can be eliminated by applying these steps. I can withdraw main line passenger trains. I can increase suburban fares. I can pull up branch lines. All these methods can be used to wipe out the losses which the Railways as such are incurring. But, Sir, I do not think that will be a very sensible way of doing things. The hon. member had a few suggestions to make. He said that productivity and efficiency must be increased. I have already dealt with that. I have shown what was being done and what would be done. But surely even the hon. member will realize that one cannot increase productivity and efficiency to the tune of R39 million, which, according to his figures, are the losses suffered by the Railways. The hon. member suggests that the capital expenditure should be curtailed to decrease the interest burden. I am also concerned about the mounting interest burden, but that again is in direct contrast to what the hon. member for Yeoville said. He said he agreed with the capital expenditure and that it was absolutely essential that that expenditure should be embarked upon to enable the Railways to keep pace with our expanding economy. But the hon. member says it must be reduced. If I were to accept that suggestion and reduce capital expenditure so as to decrease the interest burden, does the hon. member realize that the loss on the operation of the Railways will then be even greater because we will not be able to cope with the traffic offering?

I did not say that. I said it was one of your problems.

Oh, it is only my problem! But when one states a problem and the hon. member offers no solution, then apparently I must accept that he is against it. Surely it is in the interest of our economy that the Railways as a whole should balance its accounts and that profits on one branch of the service should be utilized to offset losses on other branches. That is what is done by any good, sensible businessman.

Oh no!

Oh yes! Sir, I am the director of a company, and it so happens that a certain branch is run at a loss, but we find that it is in the interest of the public that it should be run at a loss, because the losses are offset by the profits on the other branches.

Is that why you closed down the catering services?

No, that is why I am still running the catering services on the trains at a considerable loss, because I am giving that service to the public.

Why did you close down the catering services on the stations?

To reduce the loss, but I am still running the dining-cars at a considerable loss, and I am doing that in the interest of the public, in order to give them a necessary service. That is also why I am running the railway passenger services at a loss. In other words, my policy is, as I have said, that the burden must be spread over the whole of the community. Hon. members are so fond of talking about railway users as if the railway users are a small, exclusive community. But that is not so. Every person in this country is to a larger or lesser extent dependent on railway transport. The ordinary purchaser of food in a shop is dependent on the transport of that particular food by the railways. Consequently, it is not the so-called railway users only, but the whole of the community on which the burden must be spread.

The hon. member made a few suggestions as to how the loss on the Railways as such could be eliminated. Claims could be reduced. That would reduce the loss by R1 million, but that is very far from R39 million. I have dealt with the question of efficiency. The hon. member suggested that we must employ outside consultants, but we have been doing that for years. In fact, I am employing outside firms as maintenance gangs in the signalling department, apart from engineering consultants. The hon. member said that I must reduce capital expenditure. I have dealt with that. And, of course, I must reduce the profits on the pipeline to assist the motorists on the Rand. If I do all this, it certainly will not add up to that figure of his of R39 million losses on the Railways.

Then I come to the hon. member for Durban (Point). I want to quote what he said, because this is rather serious. He said—

I have no complaint about that. Then he says—

It is unfortunately true that due to the regrettable accident in which 90 non-white passengers and one white servant lost their lives and 52 non-white passengers sustained injuries which required hospital treatment, the statistics in the annual report show a sharp rise in the fatality rate. The circumstances surrounding the accident were so tragic that it is to be regretted that the hon. member saw fit to use the fatality rate to make a debating point; as the incident was given wide publicity in the Press at the time, and subsequently during the court proceedings, I do not consider it necessary to go into details. I would point out, however, that if it had not been for this one tragic accident the Department’s safety record would have shown a considerable improvement over that of the previous year. Although the ideal aimed at is to maintain a completely accident-free record, the number of casualties is not excessive when bearing in mind that more than 451 million passengers were carried. Then, in regard to his contention that it is as the result of overtime, research has proved that there is no correlation between the accident rate and the extent to which Sunday time and overtime are worked. Furthermore, I want to tell the hon. member this. I receive a report on every accident, and at the same time I receive a report of the hours that the driver, if he is responsible, has been on duty, and the hours that the guard has been on duty, and the rest periods they have had before coming on duty. It has been proved that it is not overtime that is the cause of these accidents.

The hon. member spoke about the Airways and said there was no planning ahead. Unfortunately the hon. member probably wanted to get a seat on one or two flights and they were booked up. But that is not a reflection on the Airways as a whole.

It happens every week.

No, it does not. [Interjections.] Of course you can get on a plane, except when all the members of Parliament want to go away at the same time. If they book in advance, they can obtain seats, and if there are sufficient passengers we run additional flights. We have sufficient planes to cope with the passengers and we can always introduce additional flights if there are sufficient passengers. Apart from that, we have just taken a new Boeing 727 into service. The hon. member talks about planning. If he looks at the Brown Book he will see that there are two 707’s on order, and one 727 for domestic flights and two 737’s for domestic flights. There is no question of there not being any planning. [Interjections.] The hon. member for Yeoville has a peculiar gift for making silly interjections. If all the flights are full, we would be operating at 100 per cent load factor, but we are not doing that. On an average we are far below the 100 per cent load factor, both internally and externally. But the planning is there. New planes have been, ordered and will be placed in service towards the end of the year and the beginning of next year.

May I ask whether the Minister feels that he will be able to cope with the internal traffic in the next five years?

If I cannot, I will buy more planes. The hon. member states that it is the rates policy which leads to industries being established at places where there is a concentration of consumers. I mentioned in my Budget Speech that the transport of manufactured articles, which is high-rated traffic, is decreasing as the result of this, but I do not know whether the hon. member ever read the report of the Schumann Committee. After making a very thorough investigation into all aspects, that Committee came to the conclusion that in less than 5 per cent of the industries do Railway rates play a part in deciding where that industry is established. That is also the reply to the hon. member for Green Point. All those matters that the hon. member for Green Point raised were inquired into by the Schumann Committee, in regard to the tariffs on low-rated goods and on high-rated goods, on the establishment of industries, etc., and they came to this conclusion; and the Schumann Commission made no recommendation that the tariffs on low-rated goods should be raised to such an extent that it would be quite uneconomic for manufacturers if their raw materials had to be transported for some distance.

Then there is the hon. member for Umlazi. Sir, this hon. member used to confine his remarks to Durban Harbour. According to a Press report he was recently appointed by the shipping correspondent of a morning newspaper as the United Party’s harbour expert. As a matter of fact, he was taken on a tour through Cape Town Harbour and this shipping correspondent showed him everything that is supposed to be wrong in the Cape Town Harbour. All the points which he raised here to-day are contained in a report in the Cape Times by the shipping correspondent.

That is not correct.

I will show the hon. member that it is correct. Sir, this shipping correspondent is a professional grouser. He is under the impression—and I am saying this quite seriously—that in order to be able to earn his salary he must criticize and condemn everything. He relies entirely on his own observations and hearsay. All that he has to do to get all the necessary information is to go to the authorities, to the port captain or the harbour superintendent, but he does not do that; he runs back to his office and writes an article for the Cape Times based on his own observations and hearsay. The hen. member was so gullible as to swallow hook, line and sinker everything that he was told by this particular gentleman, and he then came here and told us in what a terrible state Cape Town Harbour is. The hon. gentleman should always take what he hears from this shipping correspondent with a pinch of salt.

The hon. member said in his opening remarks that the harbours were the Cinderella of the national transport organization. That is absolute nonsense. He suggested that Harbours should be divorced from Railways. That suggestion was first made by Mr. Butcher, the hon. member’s predecessor as United Party spokesman on harbour matters. I have dealt with that suggestion over and over again, and I have tried to explain to hon. members that it will be of no benefit to the harbours if they were divorced from the Railways. This story about “railway thinking” is the biggest rubbish that one can think of. The hon. member does not realize that there must be the fullest co-ordination between rail and harbours. You cannot expand the harbours without taking into consideration the rail takeoff. There is a limit to the amount of capital that is available. All the capital that can be raised is spent on the expansion of the harbours. The hon. member does not realize that even if Harbours are divorced from the Railways, Harbours would be in the same position as far as obtaining the necessary capital is concerned; it all comes from the same source. The Railway Administration realizes the importance of the Harbours. Does the hon. member seriously believe that the Railways have some bias against the Harbours when the harbours constitute one of our best earners of revenue? I say again that it would be of no earthly benefit to Harbours to divorce them from Railways. As a matter of fact, we have seen overseas that where a port is under a certain authority like the Port of London Authority, it makes no difference at all; it would be in precisely the same position if it were under the control of the Railways in Britain.

The hon. member talks about the planning for the Durban Harbour being so far behind. The plans for the Durban Harbour were completed years ago. The planning is not behind; what is behind is the execution of the plans. The planning were embarked upon years before the recommendation was made in regard to the building of that pier. The Moffat Committee completed the planning years before we started building the pier. There is nothing wrong with the planning. Planning is continually taking place in regard to Cape Town Harbour. Tests are now being made in regard to the new harbour on the other side of the present harbour. However, I will deal with that later on. The hon. member says that the harbours are the Cinderella of the Railway Administration. Let me show the hon. member what is actually being done. Capital and Betterment Works at a total cost of R99.8 million are at present being carried out in the different harbours. Of this amount R14.6 million was spent up to the 31st March of last year, while an amount of R13.6 million is expected to be spent during the current year. In the Brown Book for 1967-’68 provision is made for improvements and additions at a cost of approximately R7.7 million. That is what is being done. Sir, now I want to show how wrong this informant is who gave the hon. member the information on which he based his speech. He talks about antequated and inadequate facilities. The hon. member also referred to antequated and inadequate facilities in the Cape Town Harbour.

They are both right.

No, they are both wrong. The hon. member does not know that the stevedore provide their own special equipment. The stevedores, who are private people, private companies, have their own private gangs of labour to unload ships. We are only responsible for the goods when they are loaded into the sheds. We do not unload the ships, except so far as coal and our own commodities are concerned. The stevedores provide their own special equipment for the landing of bulk cargoes and the Administration supplements this where justified by the traffic offering. In Table Bay Harbour the Administration has provided a Buhler discharging unit (“marine legs”) for the discharging of grain and in view of the programme for the importation of grain through Table Bay Harbour during 1967, arrangements have been made to make a second Buhler unit available which will be in service within the next few weeks. The stevedores themselves possess four hoppers and five grabs and, if necessary, can acquire a further four grabs at short notice. With this equipment, plus the Administration’s Buhler discharging unit, an average of 1,600 tons of grain can be discharged per shift of eight hours, and under favourable conditions, over 2,000 tons per shift. With the second Buhler unit an average of 2,800 tons per shift can be maintained. The hon. member talked about the coal ship, Johan Hugo. He and his mentor want me to spend a very large sum of money to provide certain facilities for the off-loading of locomotive coal from the Johan Hugo. That ship comes into Cape Town Harbour twice a month. Does the hon. member think that that expenditure will be justified?

It might be.

It will not be justified, because one of the suggestions is that it should be off-loaded with a belt and that the track should be sunk so that the coal can be loaded direct into the trucks. It will not justify it. If there had been a continuous importation of coal it might have been justified, but when you have a ship coming into Cape Town Harbour twice a month and discharging coal it is certainly not justified, and that equipment cannot be provided.

Provision has already been made for 18 new cranes, of which 14 will replace old cranes. In the Brown Book for 1967-’68 provision is made for nine cranes, of which seven are intended to replace old cranes. By 1970-’71 a total of 31 new cranes will be in service, of which 19 will have replaced old cranes and 12 will be additional. A crane turntable is being constructed between A and B berths which will permit of the cranes at A, B, C and D berths being switched from one berth to another in accordance with shipping requirements. The elbow quay is presently being widened to provide more open space, and a modern shed is being erected there. A new shed was also recently completed at H berth. Provision is made in the Brown Book for a new repair quay at right angles to M berth. Once this quay is available it will no longer be necessary to allocate commercial berths to ships undergoing repairs.

The hon. member also talked about a shortage of trucks. There is no shortage of trucks for bulk or other cargo at present. The discharge of bulk cargo is, however, frequently delayed because consignees can only accept consignments in limited quantities. In such cases it becomes a matter of choosing the lesser of two evils, either to restrict the rate of discharge, thereby extending occupation of the quay for a longer period than would normally be necessary, or to have trucks standing under load in yards causing congestion and impairing the flow of other traffic.

This gentleman who gave the hon. member the information could have got this information if he had merely inquired from the necessary officials. This gentleman in regard to the locomotives said that the old locomotives doing the shunting in Table Bay Harbour are outdated. The fact of the matter is that the locomotives used are older and of a lighter type but they are used because it is not possible to move long strings of trucks in the harbour area. They are quite adequate to meet all requirements. The hon. member also complained about the Johan Hugo which lay idle while no off-loading was taking place. Again if this gentleman had made the necessary inquiries he would have found out what the true position was, which is the following. On that occasion the Johan Hugo had to be docked at J berth whilst the Japanese research ship, Fuji, was at K berth. The latter ship had dangerous cargo on board and in accordance with harbour regulations the wharf area opposite the ship had to be closed whilst that ship’s cargo was being worked. As a result these loaded coal trucks could not be shunted out and empties shunted in. This necessitated the temporary cessation of discharging operations by the Johan Hugo and the stoppage of trains. I can deal with all the other ships such as the one which had a cargo of sulphur that the hon. member mentioned and the motor ship that was landing phosphor.

The hon. member suggested that an inquiry should be made into the building of a new harbour in False Bay. When it was decided to build a new fishing harbour, the necessary inquiries were made in regard to the possibility of using some site in False Bay and it was found to be quite unpractical. An inquiry was made in regard to whether Rietvlei would be suitable for a new commercial harbour and it was found to be quite impracticable. You have the same rocky bottom at Rietvlei as you have in Table Bay. There are no railway facilities at Saldanha Bay and it is quite impracticable to establish a new commercial harbour there. As a matter of fact, that is where Cape Town Harbour should have been originally. It is only owing to the shortage of water that it was built here. I suggest that qualified experts should be left to decide where the harbour should be. The hon. member suggested that night working should be done. Night working is resorted to when necessary for the shipping of export fruit. Overtime and Sunday time is also worked on request from the shipping agents because they have to pay. Night shift working as a regular feature would be an expensive undertaking which is not justified by the normal volume of cargo offering. This will in any case not be a practical proposition unless custom clearance and deliveries to consignees were effected during the night. It is no use blocking the sheds. The goods must be got out of the sheds and de-

There are not enough sheds either.

We have got enough sheds. There is no room for additional sheds where sheds have been built. Clogging up the sheds if you are unable to deliver is not going to alleviate the position at all. I might tell the hon. member that appeals have frequently been made to commerce and industry to accept consignments after normal working hours but with very few exceptions the response has been unfavourable. I might tell the hon. member that after full inquiry and investigation it was found that delays to shipping are mainly attributable to the bunching of ships caused by factors beyond the administration’s control, such as the recent strikes by seamen and dock workers in the U.K. and the U.S.A., the allocation of additional import permits, and unfavourable weather conditions. Delays of this nature are experienced by ports all over the world. All the ships at anchor in the roadstead are not awaiting berths. Some wait outside to suit their own convenience, that is, ships arriving before schedule to ship loads which are not ready, trawlers awaiting the arrival of the mother ship to transfer their catches, etc. I say again that if the hon. member and his reporter friend had only taken the trouble to approach the official concerned he would have got all this information and it would have been quite unnecessary for him to raise this matter in the House. The hon. member was very concerned about the fact that the ship Universe Defiance was denied accommodation in the dry dock. He even went so far as to say that it must have been a political decision. Heaven only knows what politics has to do with that. The facts of the matter are the following: Firstly this ship is flying the Liberian flag and not the American flag.

It is American

owned.

There must be something wrong, because it is registered in Liberia. The drydock was tentatively booked on 10th January, 1967, by agents for the Universe Defiance for a period of four to five days from 18th March, 1967. I want hon. members to listen carefully. In accordance with circumstances existing at that time, the port captain advised the agents verbally that he did not foresee difficulty in accommodating the vessel. Confirmatory agreement for admission of the vessel to the drydock was however not completed on 28th February and the agents were advised in writing that the drydock was no longer available for the period in question. Is that clear? The graving-dock is at the present time occupied by the Suiderkruis for approximately three months for the purpose of refitting. This ship was at anchorage in the roadstead for some three weeks awaiting admission to the harbour for conversion. Owing to the pressure of shipping it was found impossible to accommodate the ship at such a berth in the near future. At last they resorted to admitting it to the Surrock graving-dock. That became available on 5th March. I think it would be most unreasonable for us now to approach the agents of the Suiderkruis and to ask them to vacate the graving-dock for some five days, as that would necessitate the ship being again moved to the roadstead, with cessation of all work during that period. I hope that that is now perfectly clear to the hon. member. He will see that no political decision was involved. I do not know what the politics of the owners of the Universe Defiance are.

The hon. member also wanted to know something more about the idea which was propounded in the newspapers about the new super tanker dock to be built in Saldanha Bay by private enterprise. I said by way of interjection that I thought it was a pipe dream. I still think it is. It is estimated that the whole project will cost about R150 million. They say that South African capital is to be utilized. In other words, lots of suckers will probably be caught. I think they must be warned in time. Then they want to build a pipeline from Jutten Island in Saldanha Bay to the refinery here. Why the refinery should use the oil from Jutten Island when they have the tanker dock and they are quite satisfied with it, I do not know. Then they want to build a pipeline 900 miles long to the Witwatersrand, when we already have a pipeline from Durban to the Witwatersrand. The whole thing seems so silly to me, especially in view of the fact that Richards Bay is to be developed as a deep-sea harbour which will be able to accommodate big tankers. Richards Bay is much closer to the Witwatersrand than Saldanha Bay is.

You could have another pipeline there.

Yes, of course, if it is necessary. If a new refinery is erected on the Witwatersrand. a new pipeline will probably be built. Apart from that, a pipeline can very easily be built from Richards Bay to the Durban refineries. It is only a 100 miles away. Now the hon. member will see why I think it is a pipe dream. I think he will agree with me. It is a bit of a pipe dream, is it not? I want to say lastly that in regard to our harbours the testimonials we receive from masters of visiting vessels are to the effect that South African harbours can compare favourably with most other harbours in the world and that the turn-around period for ships in South Africa is on the whole as good as anywhere else. That is not what I say. That is what the people who are most concerned say, namely the masters of visiting vessels.

Now I come to the hon. member for Green Point. I do not have much to say to him. All I can say to him is that he should read the Schumann Committee’s report. He will then probably get the replies to most of the questions he has asked. The hon. member wanted a revision of rates. That would be quite impracticable at the present time. There cannot e any surrender of revenue. As I have said, it is not the rates which are the deciding factor in the establishment of an industry at a particular place. It is only one of the factors, and not the deciding factor. Then the hon. member spoke about the Lumber Milling Company which wanted to establish a factory close to its source of raw material and that with the higher rates on the manufactured article, it was decided to go closer to the market. I do not know whether the hon. member is seriously suggesting that the rate applicable to raw materials be substantially increased, because if that were to be done, I wonder whether the hon. member realized what the effects thereof would be on all those industries who are close to their markets and are dependent on raw materials being transported from a point a considerable distance away. That will disturb our whole economy if we were to do that. Furthermore, it has been the policy not only of myself but of all previous Ministers, for generations in fact, that raw materials should be transported at a lower cost than manufactured articles, even though in bulk and even if the Administration has to utilize more trucks to convey the raw materials than for manufactured goods. That is a generally accepted principle. Even the Schumann Committee, which made a study of this, did not make a recommendation that the difference between high and low rated traffic should be eliminated. It only recommended that the gap should be decreased, something which is being done gradually.

Then you won’t get decentralization.

The Schumann Committee stated that only 5 per cent of the industries are influenced in their establishment by rates. In regard to the passenger fare on surburban lines in the Cape Peninsula, I must admit that in some instances the increase in fares was higher than 20 per cent. For this two factors are responsible. There is the fact that revised mileages came into operation at the same time. These revised mileage scales although beneficial to some affected others detrimentally. However, to show that on the whole everybody benefited I can only mention that I had to surrender R6 million in revenue as a result of the introduction of these new mileage tables.

The hon. member for Albany wanted me to restore the rebate on livestock to agricultural shows. Well, on the one hand some hon. members want me to go ahead with the implementation of the recommendations of the Schumann Committee while the hon. member, on the other hand, pleads with me to reject certain of these recommendations. This I think I cannot do. I think the position must remain as it is. He also pleaded for a reduction in rates on a number of agricultural commodities-low and that the agricultural community has to agricultural commodities are exceptionally always been treated with the greatest sympathy. As a matter of fact, of all those affected by increases in rates over recent years, the agricultural community has the least cause for complaint. He also wanted to know whether I was satisfied that East London could cope with the shipping offering. I am satisfied that all grain ships can be accommodated.

*The hon. member for Colesberg asked that the Administration should deal more sympathetically with employees who have committed infringements, and should offer them a chance of re-employment. I may inform the hon. member that that is being done. If an employee is discharged for a serious infringement, he is permitted to apply anew for employment after a period of 12 months has elapsed. If there are indications that he will rehabilitate himself, he is given another chance. We even go as far as offering people who have committed theft another chance if they show that they have been rehabilitated. Each case is dealt with on its merits, of course.

Finally I want to express my appreciation for the constructive and sound contributions made to this debate by hon. members on this side of the House. [Laughter.] Mr. Speaker, hon. members on the opposite side are so easily amused. In any event, I think the laughter we have heard bears testimony to their embarrassment more than to anything else. The Budget reflects the sound condition of the economy of South Africa. Would hon. members laugh at that, too, or do they agree with that? They are not laughing now. The Budget testifies to the confidence we all have in the future of South Africa. Of course I appreciate that there is room for criticism. That was in fact why I congratulated the hon. member for Yeoville on his speech to-day. In fact, it would be a miracle if there were no weaknesses in an organization as large as the South African Railways. I myself am only too strongly aware of those weaknesses—in fact, with all the knowledge I have, I wish I could have been in the Opposition! The Railways, however, is hampered by a staff shortage in many important grades, but that there has been so little criticism, despite that shortage, is a tribute to all staff, from the highest to the lowest. I am in fact very proud of my railwaymen. I have frequently had to say “no” when they approached me with some request or other, and in future I shall have to say “no” again to their requests, but despite that they have always given me their full loyalty through the years. In fact, that has been proved at every election. To the public in general I want to give the assurance that my staff and I will in future do everything in our ability to render good services to the public.

Question put: That all the words after “That stand part of the motion.

Upon which the House divided:

Ayes—103: Bekker, M. J. H.; Bezuidenhout, G. P. C.; Bodenstein, P.; Botha, M. C.; Botha, M. W.; Botha. P. W.; Botha, S. P.; Brandt, J. W.; Carr, D. M.; Coetzee, J. A.; De Jager, P. R.; Delport, W. H.; De Wet, M. W.; Diederich's, N.; Du Plessis, H. R. H.; Engelbrecht, J. J.; Erasmus, A. S. D.; Erasmus, J. J. P.; Fouché, J. J.; Frank, S.; Froneman, G. F. van L.; Greyling, J. C.; Grobler, M. S. F.; Grobler, W. S. J.; Haak, J. F. W.; Havemann, W. W. B.; Heystek, J.; Horn, J. W. L.; Janson, T. N. H.; Jurgens, J. C.; Knobel, G. J.; Koornhof, P. G. J.; Kruger, J. T.; Langley, T.; Le Grange, L.; Le Roux, F. J.; Le Roux, J. P. C.; Le Roux, P. M. K.; Malan, G. F.; Malan, J. L: Malan, W. C.; Marais, J. A.; Marais, W. T.; Maree, G. de K.; Martins, H. E.; McLachlan, R.; Meyer, P. H.; Morrison, G. de V.; Mulder, C. P.; Muller, H.; Muller, S. L.; Otto, J. C.; Pansegrouw, J. S.; Pelser, P. C.; Pienaar, B.; Potgieter, J. E.; Potgieter, S. P.; Rail, J. J.; Rail, J. W.; Rail, M. J.; Raubenheimer, A. J.; Raubenheimer, A. L.; Reinecke, C. J.; Reyneke, J. P. A.; Rossouw, W. J. C.; Roux, P. C.; Schlebusch, A. L.; Schlebusch, J. A.; Schoeman, B. J.; Schoeman, H.; Schoeman, J. C. B.; Smit, H. H.; Steyn. A. N.; Swiegers, J. G.; Torlage, P. H.; Treurnicht, N. F.; Van den Berg, G. P.; Van den Heever, D. J. G.; Van der Merwe, C. V.; Van der Merwe, H. D. K.; Van der Merwe, S. W.; Van der Merwe, W. L.; Van der Wath, J. G. H.; Van Niekerk. M. C.; Van Rensburg, M. C. G. J.; Van Staden, J. W.; Van Tonder, J. A.; Van Vuuren, P. Z. J.; Van Wyk, H. J.; Van Zyl, J. J. B.; Venter, M. J. de la R.; Venter, W. L. D. M.; Visse, J. H.; Visser, A. J.; Volker, V. A.; Vorster, B. J.; Vorster, L. P. J.; Vosloo, A. H.: Vosloo, W. L.; Wentzel, J. J.; Wentzel, J. J. G.

Tellers: P. S. van der Merwe, and B. J. van der Walt.

Noes—33: Basson, J. A. L.: Basson. J. D. du P.; Bennett, C.; Connan, J. M.; Emdin, S.; Fisher, E. L.; Graaff, De V.; Higgerty, J. W.; Hourquebie, R. G. L.; Hughes, T. G.; Jacobs, G. F.; Lewis, H.; Malan, E. G.; Marais, D. J.; Mitchell, D. E.; Moolman, J. H.; Murray, L. G.; Oldfield, G. N.; Radford, A.; Raw, W. V.; Smith, W. J. B.; Steyn, S. J. M.; Sutton, W. M.; Thompson, J. O. N.; Timoney, H. M.; Wainwright, C. J. S.; Waterson, S. F.; Webber, W. T.; Wiley, J. W. E.; Winchester, L. E. D.; Wood, L. F.

Tellers: H. J. Bronkhorst and A. Hopewell.

Question affirmed and amendment dropped.

Motion accordingly agreed to.