WELLINGTON TOPICS

Hokitika Guardian, 26 October 1928, Page 2

WELLINGTON TOPICS

HOLDER OF THE PURSE

MASTER Ol*’ All NIST LI Y

(Special to “Guardian”.)

WELLINGTON, Oct. 23

Mr Coates during his election campaign is muking it abundantly plain ,why tiiose two great party leaders, Mr Seddon and Mr Massey, held strongly that the head of the Government in this country, the Minister who is responsible to the representative of t ■ C t own and to the people of the Dominion, should have charge of the Treasury. The Prime Minister probably would retort to t-liis contention that the head of the Imperial Government is not invariably the Chancellor olf the Exchequer. And he would be right. But the position in the Mother Country is very different from the position here. Mr Winston Churchill, the present Chancellor in Mr Baldwin’s Cabinet, lias not to finance the building and running of railways, a great loan department, a detailed public works department and a score or two other departments, of smaller or greater dimensions, which in New rf < must look to the Treasury for thenmeans of existence. These are the responsibilities Mr Coates Tms passed on to his colleague, the Minister of Finance, and by virtue of the burdens he bears Mr Downie Stewart, according to the view of Mr Seddon. is virtually Prime Minister of the Dominion.

s TALKING AT LARGE. Having relieved himself olf immediate personal responsibility in , regard to the Treasury, Mr Coates finds it easy to talk discursively of finance from the electioneering platform. “ Sir Joseph Ward,” he told his goodnatured audience at Invercargill. “ is evidently making a bid for the. support of the commercial world by his proposal to reduce and finally abolish company taxation. The Government has given earnest consideration to the representations which have been made, but it is felt that the time is not vet .. ripe for further reduction. The commercial world, however, will ‘ assess this plank in the United Party’s platform at its true value when it sits down to work .out the problems to how three and a ha Ilf millions are to be added to the interest bill without an extra penny taxation.” Had Mr Coates really understood what he was. talking about these statements and suggestions would have been unpardonable. He evidently had not found time to read the report of Sir Joseph Ward’s speech at Auckland or had sadly misunderstood its purport. He is too chivalrous a fighter, even at election time, as many of his political opponents readily will aver, to resort to deliberate misrepresentatidn. WHAT COMMISSIONERS SAID.

The Prime Minister himself, however, ought to have known enough .about , the attitude of the commercial world towards the income tax to have realised it would not he in league with Sir Joseph Ward or anyone else in abolishing this impost altogether Mr. Massey set up two royal commissions to deal with the subject, the chairman of the second one being a judge of the Supreme Court and the other members commercial and financial authorities of the very highest standard. One of them, by the way, is at the present f-jtio a very big figure in the electioneering campaign. The members of this commission, who were specially chosen for their expert knowledge, were unanimous in recommending a reduction of the income tax as early as possible and an immediate alteration in ■ its incidence. This was four or five years ago, before Mr Coates had given any serious attention to national finance, and he well may have been confused by Sir Joseph Ward’s demand that the thousand’s of people with comparatively small investments in companies, and yet indirectly paying the highest rate of taxation, should be relieved of an obviously unjust burden. Sir Joseph’s contention was, of course, that investors in companies should not be special lv penalised. "those seventy millions.

As for Mr Coates’s ludicrous assumption that Sir Joseph Ward contemplated raising his seventy millions all at once and locking them up in the Treasury at a cost of three and a-halif millions a year to the country, much electioneering must have sadly dulled the Minister’s • sense of humour. Whether or not it would he wise for the country to commit itself for ten years to approximately the same rate of borrowing as it has been following during the last decade or two is a question for the new Parliament to determine; but .there is nothing to be gained in knowledge or in security by aspersing any honest proposal. Sii Joseph Ward claims that his seventy millions would not cost the taxpayers a single shilling, the whole sum being employed in what the Ministers of Finance style “productive investments, and as'the author of the advances to settlers scheme his judgment is. entitled to some respect; It would he more satisfactory to everyone concerned, however, if the proposal were referred to an independent body of experts before being submitted to a Parliament which, whatever the result of the pollin«r next month may be, will have no particular qualification for the solution of such a problem.