"ENTIRELY SATISFACTORY."

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 170, 5 August 1937, Page 4

"ENTIRELY SATISFACTORY."

This is the phrase which the Hon. Peter Fraser, as actingMinister of Finance, applies to the figures published to-day showing the State revenue and expenditure for the first quar- • ter (ended 30th. June) of the current financial year. These reveal a colleqtion of taxation for that short period of ciose on a round million (^928,000) more than was gathered in for the corresponding quarter of last year. Thus this complacent expression of self-satisfaction comes a little strangely from the mouth of a Labour leader who among others, was at election-time loud in complaints with regard to the weight of taxation the country had to carry and declared that it 0 had already reached the bearable limit, the implication being that a Labour Government would see that, if anything, it would be reduced. We know how far this pleasing prospect was realised last financial year, for which the taxation coilection (irrespective of unemployment tax) was little less than ;£ 5 -million — over £3 a head of the population — in excess of that for the last year of the Cqalition Government. Now we have started off on the second' year of Labour administration on a basis indicating only too clearly that the end of the year will show much the same, if not, perhaps, a worse, result. Then, when the Minister regards this position as being "entirely satisfactory," it does not bid very fair for any relaxation so long as the Government to which he belongs may continue to rule th§ country' s affairs with its unbending rod of iron. Coming to the more detaiied figures we have Customs duties for the quarter up by more than £300,000, thus lending at least some Inferential support to our own manufacturers' complaints that under the conditions now imposed upon them they cannot, even with the advantage these duties give tbem, compete successfully with oversea producers. Then we have the beer duty showing an increase for the quarter of some £36,000 (over 20 p.c.), which gives some fair idca as to which of our home industres is profiting most under the changed conditions and no doubt accounts a good deal for the ardent advocacy of the Labour Government which we have recently had from a brewery magnate placed by that Government on the directorate of the Bank of New Zealand. Then, most striking of all perhaps, is the Saies Tax, condemned lock, stock and barrel by every Labour speaker on the hastings and, according to them, to be instantly wiped olf the Statute Book as being an oppression upon all classes ano especially upon the wage-earners. Yet there it still stands, towards the end of Labour' s second year in power. Not only that, but its aggregat e is steadily, even rapidly, rising. As compared with the corresponding quarter of last financial year it is, for the quarter under review, up by £187,000 or more than 25 p.c., while, as compared with the corresponding quarter in 1935, it is up by £321,000, or not very far short of 60 p.c. All this, too,. says nothing of the Unemployment taxation, which is still being levied on the basis to which the previous Government had found it possible to reduce it in view of the better times that had begun to show themselves pretty plainly in jts last year of office. He re, again, we were to have, under a Labour Government, such a speedy disappearance of unemployment that there would be no need for any such taxation. But under it the Government last financial year took something like £4-million out of the pockets of the people and for this year it still collects at the same rate. And yet Mr. Fraser says that this is all "entirely satisfactory".