BY WAY OF CONTRAST.

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 211, 22 September 1937, Page 4

BY WAY OF CONTRAST.

The Sydney message on the opposite page which gives us a brief outline of proposals embodied in the Budget presented yesterday by Mr B. Stevens, Premier and Finance M$:ster of the State of N.S.W., can scarcely but arouse some wonderment as to whether our own Minister of Finance, the Hon. Walter Nash, will, this week or next, be able to hand us out anything at all comparable with it. If he should, then it will undoubtedly be a very pleasant disappointment to many thousands of taxpayers in all ranks and classes. In the first place, it will be seen that the State's last fmancial year, which ended on 30th. June, showed a bare surplus of £74,000, meaning that the Government* s requirements had been very closely estimated and that no unnecessary taxation had been exacted. Our own corresponding figure for our fmancial year ended 31st. March last, was a surplus of close on half a million, even after providing for our Government's abnormally extbavagant expenditure, undeniable evidence of the exaction of unneeded taxation. Then, for the current year, Mr Stevens is able to propose reductions in taxation that will total close on £2 3-4-million, and New Zealand wage-earners will specially note that as a result some 300,000 of their New South Wales fellows will be completely relieved from payment of the wages-tax, this extending even to those family men earning up to £6 a week. This, too, it is to be further noted, is to be effected without shifting the burden onto the shoulders of other taxpayers, who, on the contrary, are also to be granted some at least appreciable remission so far as wages-tax is concerned. Mr Stevens' statement that his Government is working quietly towards abolition of the wages-tax and other special taxation imposed to meet the exigences of the depression peri^d prompts the quotation of official figures recently published with respect to the reduction of unemployment in his State. In 1933 a good deal more than one-fourth — 26.5 per cent, to be exact— of the State's available wage-earners were without work and on relief or sustenance. Even in 1934 the figure was 22 per cent. Since then the reduction has gdne steadily on until at the beginning of Australia' s last fmancial year it was down to 1 1.2 per cent., and at the end of that year it stood at very little more than 6 per cent.., since when it has been substantially improved. This is a wonderful record, particularly when we bear in mind the legacy of confusion left by Mr J. T. Lang's extremist Labour Government. While our own Government seems to have no recourse for reducing unemployment other than putjlic works and house-building financed out of public money — see. the Hon. Armstrong's statement published yesterday — it is worth while observing that in New South Wales factories there were ernployed in July last some 18,000. more hands than a year eailier and 30,000 more than in July, 1935. Then during last fmancial year in only 42 of the State's larger factories the number of hands went up by more than 2,000, the weekly wages pay-out by more than £10,000, and the saies by some 18 per cent., or close on half a million — a fair proportion of the output no doubt coming to New Zealand, where, owing to conditions created during the last 2t months, our home industries are unable to compete with the Australian. It was only a few weeks back that Mr Stevens on the occasion of opening a new factory was able to say that during the past five years some £2 3-4-million had been invested to produce commodities not made in Australia. prior to 1932, thus giving employment to more than 5000 people and with a yearl)^ output worth £3^-million. In the extension of atready established industries, he added, more than £io-million had been invested, giving employment to 23,000 people and vfith an annual output worth more than £i4-million, while si* milar investment of another £to-million was in immediate prospect. Of the investpd capital a lafge proportion was coming from outside the State, a good deal of it from the Old Country thus, as Mr Stevens said, showing that "capital knows where it will be safe." A notable feature of this gieat industrial revival has been its expansion into fields hitherto comparatively undeveloped. Hpw does all this compare with tne stagnation of industrial life in this Dominion, where almost every speech and every act of our Socialist Government is calculated not to encourage, but rather to deter, if not to prohibit, the investment of private 'capital and the extension of private enterprise ?