Morning Bulletin (Rockhampton), Tuesday 17 July
1894, page 6
Postage Rates
A one of
the results of the recent postal conference at Wellington, says the Brisbane
Telegraph, a convention to settle the inter-colonial postal relations, and to
render them as uniform as the existing laws would allow, was drawn up, and
submitted by the heads of departments to the Ministerial delegates, and having
been approved by them, it has, with or without modifications, been ratified by
the respective Governments, and came into operation on the first of this month.
In this colony the convention has been altered in several details to accord
with the Post and Telegraph Act of 1891. The following is a brief resume of the
alterations referred to, and of the effect of the convention, as adopted, on
the previous regulations:-The inter-colonial rates of postage have not been
affected. A proposition was, indeed, made, and embodied in the convention, to the
effect that a special rate of postage should be made for magazines and
periodical literature other than newspapers, of ld. for the first 8 oz., and 0.5d.
for every additional 4oz., but as the postal law of this colony had fixed the
inland rate on such articles at 1d. for 4oz., to admit a lower rate intercolonially
would have been very prejudicial to the trade of the Queensland booksellers,
and it was therefore disallowed by the Postmaster-General. A stipulation of the
convention that all letters or packets having bank notes or other valuable
enclosures, posted without registration, should be compulsorily registered and
charged a double registration fee of 6d. before delivery, though agreed to by
all the other colonies, could not be accepted here because our Act provides
that persons who choose to take the risk may post letters with bank notes
enclosed, without registering them; and also because where the law directed the
compulsory registration of letters with coin, jewellery, in., enclosed, it
permitted only a single fee of 3d. to be collected on delivery. Of course
letters of this description posted here and passing into another colony will be
subject to the additional charge, which will be imposed by the delivering
office. It was also provided that in these colonies, where the laws and
regulations would admit of it, no charge should be made for the re-direction of
correspondence within certain limits, but as the Queensland Act directs that
charges shall be made on this class of mail matter, this colony could not agree
to the proposition.
The
following arc the modifications of the regulations hitherto in force here: Bulk
parcels of newspapers, hitherto undefined, must now consist of at least four
copies. Insufficiently prepaid newspapers for the other colonies that have
until now been sent to the dead letter offices und destroyed, are sent on to
destination, but before delivery there must be paid double the amount of deficient
postage. Persons posting large numbers of circulars or newspapers can now pay
the postage in cash, instead of having to affix postage stamps to every one of
them. This will do away with a good deal of stamp licking. The regulations
which required packets, sent by banks, to be wholly open at one end or side has
been modified, but only so far as banks are concerned, and now it is only required
that such packets shall be sufficiently open to allow the contents to be seen.
Circulars not wholly printed, engraved, lithographed. &c., but produced by
some other mechanical process, including the copying press, the typewriter, and
imitations of it, are now admitted to the packet rate of postage if they are
submitted at the post office in numbers of not less than twenty at one time.
Provision
is made that packets that have been charged as insufficiently paid letters, for
failure to comply with the regulations, and have been refused on account of the
postage to pay shall, if, when opened at the Dead Letter office, be found to
have only such contents us are properly admissible at the packet rate, of
postage, be sent on and delivered to the addressees without charge. Similarly
if such packets are opened in the presence of a postal officer; and found to be
correct as to their contents, the charges made thereon for simple
irregularities shall be remitted.
It will
be noticed with satisfaction that almost the whole of the alterations are in
the direction of increased liberality and concessions to the persons making use
of the post office.
