Railway Commissioners

Introduction

There were several occasions when the governance of the New Zealand Railways was taken away from the Minister of Railways, and placed in the hands of Independent Commissioners, a step that is usually only taken when there are specific issues that need addressing. The formal process was that an Act of Parliament transferred management of the Railway from the Minister of Railways to the named Commissioners for a defined period. At the end of that period, a further Act would reinstate the Minister of Railways as the formal Head of the Railways Department, releasing the Commissioners of their duty. Prior to such reinstatement, the commissioners will have prepared a series of reports for Parliament's consideration, and Parliament in turn will have prepared changes to legislation based on the Commissioners recommendations if necessary.

Officially there were four such periods:

• 1889 - 1894
• 1924 - 1928
• 1931 - 1936
• 1953 - 1957

Each of these appointments were for a period of 4 - 5 years, in order to give the Commissioners time to fully understand the processes and issues that needed addressing, and to subsequently make the most appropriate recommendations to Parliament. We will explore the purpose of each, the recommendations made to Parliament, and what changes if any resulted from those.

But we need to take a step back in time, to when New Zealand's early railways were conceived, and in several cases built, the time of Provincial Governments. The Canterbury Provincial Government had a significant network in the making and had been 'running' trains for some 8 years before Julius Vogel announced his plans for developing a national network. In Otago and Auckland provinces, plans were well advance for building railways, with the Dunedin & Port Chalmers Railway being the first public railway built with private equity. While the Colonial Government announced their ambitious program for building railways, they had nothing in place for manage the running of trains on the track they would build. The simple solution was that this function be left to the Provincial Governments to deal with, as Canterbury already had considerable experience, and Otago's first railway would be a private operation. This however could only be an interim solution as the Colonial Government was also working on a plan to abolish the Provincial Governments, meaning they would also need to deal with addressing how the 'Working Railways' were going to be managed. During these early years, The Minister of Public Works reported to Parliament each year, both progress on the construction of new railways, and operation of completed railways. It was in the 1876 report that concerns were raised about the haphazard management of the various section of operational railway and that considerable savings were likely to be made if all operational railways were to come under a single management system. Debate on that report resulted in the commissioning of two reports, one for each Island with the Auckland report to be prepared by three appointed Commissioners. The South Island report was to be prepared by eight selected Railway officials, and both reports were presented to Parliament by early 1877.

So while there were four occasions when the Railways were under the control of Commissioners, there was an earlier occasion when appointed commissioners were asked to report, making a total of five.

The periods under Commisioners and their Reports

The 1953 - 1957 Commissioners

Prior to there being a Minister in charge of Railways, a special report into the Management of the New Zealand Railways was ordered by Parliament in 1876 due to the different ways the Railway was managed in the different parts of the country. The resulting report laid the foundation of