IMMIGRATION, LEGISLATION, TAXATION

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 46, 10 March 1937, Page 4

IMMIGRATION, LEGISLATION, TAXATION

In the course of his yesterday's address the Prime Minister had something to say on what he terms "the much discussed subject of Empire migration."- For a Socialist leader it is on a strangejly capitalist footing that he himself approaches it, for he says that "the first essential to a xnigration policy is a firm financial f oundation,' ' and that "only the investment of capital will enable future development to support the additional population jesulting from an active migration scheme. ' ' Capital therefore is the admittedly essential basis on which any immigration plans for this country are to be considered. But is will be observed that it is not upon the "costless" capital to oe 4 ' created' ' by our own Government that Mr. Savage would depend. It is upon the condemned and contemned accumulated capital of hardhearted British capitalists that he would draw. 41 The best investment for British capital," sagely says our Prime , Minister, "is in the British Commonweaith of Nations ' ' — an indisputable proposition, at any xate from the ppint of view of the oversea dominions. ..But what is our same Prime Minister offering as inducements to British capital, in any worthwhile volume, to embark itself on ventures in this particular doxninion, The British capitalist is unhappily for Mr. Savage's theory, hard-headed as well as hard-hearted, and he is scarcely to be expected to plaee that feead in the ngose of , ultra-Socialist restrictive and domineering legislation, which, moreover, always has in view the apropriation by the State of 4 'all means of . production, distribution and exchange." That is not the hind of prospect likely to entice British industrialists who aro accustomed to some littl freedom in developing their own undertakings in their own way. Nor are they likely to be attracted by a Government whose leaders said at eleetion time that taxation had already reached the limit of endurance, yet in its very first year of office increased the aggregate of taxation by some 20 per cent. 3