MR. HOLLAND'S MEETING

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 132, 21 February 1918, Page 6

MR. HOLLAND'S MEETING

war finance and war profits; Mr. H. E. Holland (Labour-Socialist candidate for tbe Wellington North seat) addressed a large meeting in the Kelburn Kiosk last eveuing. Mr. P. Fraser was in the chair. Mr. Holland opened his speech by charging The Dominion with having made an attempt introduce personalities into the election campaign, and with having reported his speeches in such a way as to make his utterances appear ridiculous. Referring to a charge he had made against the Defence Department of deducting from a soldier's deferred pay the cost of his maintenance in a mental hospital, Mr. Holland said he had noticed the Defence Minister's denial. He was now communicating with the relatives of the man concerned, and would make the replies public when ho received them. The subject of his speech was "the fiscal fallacies of the Government." Hβ said the Minister of Finance iiad framed his financial proposals so as to place the burden of the war on the shoulders of tho workers. He defined "workers" as all who were rendering social soivice. The whole cost of the war .should have been paid from revenue, and a statesmanlike Government would have arranged its finances that way. The Ministers had preferred to open the door wide to the war profiteers, and then to allow these people to invest . their profits in War Bonds at a high rate of interest free of income tax. He condemned the Government for having failed to tax war profits effectively. War profiteers had been allowed to defraud tho State under the war profits tax, and then tho tax had been withdrawn, and no further attempt made to touch war profits. Mr. Holland said the land for settlement system had been a miserable failure.' Tho land bought for occupation by returned soldiers was so costly that tho men hail scarcely a chiineo of success. A largo part'of the Dominion's land was I being handled at present for speculative purposes, and values were inflated to levels that nut the land out of reach of the mass of the people. The remedy was the taxation of, land values. Community-created land ' values belonged rightly to the people. "Every man would fight for his country," said Mr. Holland. "But while any 'man will fight for his country who, in the words of Ingersoll, will fight for a boardinghouse? When you want men to fight for a country, you need to make sure that they have some of the country to fight for." Ho proceeded to quote figures to show that most of tho privately-owned land of New Zealand was held by a few thousand people. . He 'charged the Government with failing to' make proper provision for the the soldiers who would return at' tho close of the war, and. in conclusion said the National Ministers were making, no attempt to meet his arguments or to justify their actions on intellectual and economic grounds. Answering questions, Mr. Holland said he was in favour of rnducin<; Ministpris.l and other lu'sjh salaries. He did not think a Govenw-Gonpral was required. . None of the belligerent countries had ppiH tho cost.of tho war from' revenue, hut the Governments were ill! incompetent. A vpto of thn.11);!! and confidence was moved and declared carried.