"SLOPPY"

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 90, 13 October 1932, Page 10

"SLOPPY"

The' Leader 0f...the.,.. Opposition, though we seldom agree his point of view, usually attempts serious criticism of proposals which he opposes; but he failed badly lasl night. Instead of showing where the National Expenditure Commission had gone wrong and why, he represented the report as an attack on the human being from the cradle to the grave. 'It was an old and stale and utterly illogical method. The Commission, Mr. Holland claimed, had demanded sacrifices from earliest infancy to old age. But that proves nothing. It might be retorted that the benefits which the State provides from the cradle to the grave for some members of the community are obtained by taxing other members to the grave and beyond. That also would prove nothing. What is needed is a reasonable investigation of both benefits and the taxes by which the benefits are provided! It is necessary to determine whether it is fair that this man should be taxed to afford a benefit for another. It is necessary even to consider whether the community, in its own interest, ban continue: to tax enterprise out of existence so that benefits may be conferred which are beyond the capacity of the community. The Commission made its examination on these lines and arrived at certain conclusions. Mr. Holland made no investigation at all, but he jumped to his conclusion that the report was "a sloppy, slovenly compilation and utterly valueless, to the Dominion." The phrase aptly describes Mr. Holland's methocj of criticism.