FAIR TREATMENT

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 21, 25 July 1945, Page 8

FAIR TREATMENT

COUNTIES* NEW ORDER

PRINCIPLES Of RATING

"Right through the war period th^ term New Order has been in the minds and en the tongues of many people. I am sure our rural ratepayers ■would like to see the principles embodied in this 'new order' extended to counties, and a fair and equitable treatment meted out to all," said Mr. W. Morrison (Maxwell) in his presidential address to the Counties' Association conference today. Among the principles desired by their ratepayers were a more equitable adjustment of the rural rating load on hospital maintenance and on. ratepayers in' locations where there are non-ratepaying Crown and Native lands; an immediate reduction in national expenditure so as to reduce taxation, a reduction in the cost of living to, say, the 1938 level, a gradual but immediate reduction in the sales tax.to the 1935 level/the cessation of sabotage of our national productive resources either by. deliberate go-slow policy or by strike and the cancellation of war emergency regulations to give everyone back his or her freedom. • • ' The county councils themselves would greatly appreciate a reduction, of all costs, including wages; the proceeds of: the petrol tax to be devoted solely to road maintenance; the removal of sales tax on material used by county councils and on building materials; immediate legislation covering their conference decisions for the past 17 years^ agreed to by the Government; the consolidation of all legislation affecting county councils into one amending Counties Act; and the various other matters presented before the Parliamentary Committee being thoroughly sifted, said Mr. Morrison. "We are living in a fool's, paradise at the moment, since work is plentiful and wages high, but the continuous upward trend of prices and wages coupled ' with necessary repatriation and gratuity expenses must eventually compel the Government to economise and adjust prices and wages to a sounder level," continued the president. "I do not advocate the ruthless cutting down of wages, but I most strongly maintain that the three interdependent factors' in our national economic life—wages, cost of production, and cost/of living—should be reduced to a reasonable level. But it will be found difficult to recede from wartime conditions and expenditure and resume sane normality, so that an overtime job lies ahead of the Government." HOSPITAL RATING. With regard to hospital maintenance, Mr. Morrison said it was perturbing to learn that social security benefits for 1944-45 were more than £2,000,000 in excess of last year's. Hospital benefits alone paid since the inception of the scheme had totalled £ 16,316,000, including medical and pharmaceutical benefits. To Mr. Morrison it was amazing that such an enormous sum. had failed to relieve the burden of hospital rating or even to arrest the continuous upward trend. This unaccountable failure to produce the results expected demanded an immediate and thorough investigation to ascertain the. causes of that failure. The basis of hospital rating. should be removed from property, and placed on earnings, thus providing equitable incidence. Until such a scheme came into force a further increase in the "bed subsidy," say another 3s a bed, should be made, and .the entire expenditure on erection and maintenance of hospital buildings should lie on the Government. . "I feel sure that I am correct in stating that nothing in recent years has stirred up our counties so much as this ever-increasing growth of the present grossly unfair method of collecting hospital levies." added Mr. Morrison.