NO BROKEN PROMISES

Evening Star, Issue 22453, 25 September 1936, Page 8

NO BROKEN PROMISES

PREMIER FACES BARRAGE OF QUESTIONS HIGH EXCHANGE WILL GO MONEY SYSTEM TO REFLECT TOTAL PRODUCTION [From Our Parliamentary Reporter.] WELLINGTON, September 25. Facing Opposition criticism that he had failed in his pledge to reduce taxation, the Prime Minister found an alert interjecting audience when intervening in the debate on the taxing measures in the House to-day. He repeated that sales tax and high exchange will disappear. Mr Hamilton: But didn’t you say you were not going to increase taxation? Mr Savage: I did not put it that way. I said taxation was overdone, also_ the use of public credit in the wrong direction. I never said there would be no borrowing, but that there was no reason to go abroad to finance a job we can do ourselves. Some of the forms of taxation in existence to-day will disappear. That barrier between us and Britain must be pulled down. Mr Wilkinson; What tax is that? The Prime Minister retorted with an emphatic declaration favouring direct taxation instead .of indirect. The barrier he meant was high exchange, which must go. Mr Coates: When? That’s what the public would like to know. Mr Savage; We will take the public into our confidence as soon as we reach the point to put that into operation. Mr Coates: You have already told us that. Everybody is on his toes to know when. Mr Savage: I wish my friend could read some of the letters 1 get. Mr Coates: And we wish you could read some of the letters we get. (Laughter.) “ Where do you stand on _ costless credit?” asked Mr Poison, adding that the Prime Minister in one breath favoured it and in another did not. Mr Savage retorted that he was going to make his own speech. However, he repeated his former declaration that the Government would create a money system which would be a true reflex of the country’s production, so that the rank and file of the people would be able to buy as well as produce. To-day they could only buy half. “We want them to buy the whole of their production.”