609848-1928-Supplementary-Draft-Bill--Carriage-of-Goods-by-Sea — Page 7

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Objects and Reasons.

1. The object of this bill is to give effect, as regards outward bills of lading from Hong Kong, to the proposals of the draft Convention on bills of lading agreed to at the meetings of the International Maritime Conference held at Brussels in October, 1922. So far as the British Empire is concerned, the Imperial Economic Conference, in November, 1923, recommended that the various govern- ments of the Empire should adopt the rules embodied in the Convention. The necessary legislation has now been passed in the United Kingdom, Australia, and most of the Colonies and Protectorates. The present bill is prac- tically a copy of the English Act.

2. The object of this body of legislation and proposed legislation is twofold. In the first place it aims at secur- ing Empire-wide and international uniformity in the law relating to bills of lading. In the second place it is in- tended to restrict the right of shipowners to contract them- selves out of their common law liability in respect of carriers' risks.

3. The principles of this legislation, and more recently the actual rules, have been subjected to exhaustive examination by the various interests concerned.

4. The bill differs from the English Act in the follow- ing particulars :-

(a) Section 5 gives a general right of contracting out of the Rules in respect of the carriage of goods by sea from Hong Kong to any place in Kwong Tung or Kwong Sai or to Macao. In the English Act the right is given in respect of the carriage of goods by sea from any port in Great Britain or Northern Ireland to any other port in Great Britain or Northern Ireland or to a port in the Irish Free State.

(b) Junk traffic is excluded by definition (d) in Article I of the Rules. In this trade it is not the practice to issue bills of lading, and, further, the incidents of the trade preclude and make undesirable any attempt to secure uniformity with the conditions of the trade carried on by ocean-going steamships.

(c) Article X of the Rules, which does not appear in the English Act, gives the debtor the right to discharge his debt in Hong Kong currency at the rate of exchange prevailing on the day of arrival of the ship at the port of discharge of the goods concerned. This is in order to avoid troublesome disputes about exchange. The right to insert such a rule is reserved in the draft Convention.

(d) In section 7 (1) a technical reference to certain

local legislation is inserted.

(e) In section 7 (2) a date is necessarily altered.

7th September, 1928.

H. E. POLLOCK,

Attorney General.