TAXATION PROTEST

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 1, 28 August 1945, Page 7

TAXATION PROTEST

"WHAT IS UNCONSTITUTIONAL?'

The question whether refusal to pay the hospital levy was constitutional or not came into the. picture. We do not want to do anything that our conscience said was unconstitutional, hut. if the conference was quite certain that hospital rating as at present carried out is unjust and unfair, then any action short of violence, would come within the category of "Constitutional.'

Mr W. Morrison Chairman of the Association said inter alia: We (the Farmers' Union and the Counties Association) had always prided ourselves on being constitutional and law abiding and ifc was not right to say that by refusing to pay the |

hospital rate we were doing right. We would he breaking the law. If you did not believe in the law as it stood the right time to register your protest was at the ballot box. Wp should not put ourselves in the same category as the miners and watersidcrs and various others who had taken the direct action which we have been fighting.

When the report was considered at last executive meeting of the N,Z Farmers' Union (Auckland Province)

he Chairman, Captain H. M. Rush

worth said that passive, resistance to unjust taxation was definitelyconstitutional and had been recog r nised as such throughout British

history from the time of Hampden

Speaking on behalf of the Farmers' Union at las.t Counties Confer r ence on the question of hospital rating Mr K. J. Glasgow said inter alia:—