STATE TRADING

Hokitika Guardian, 28 March 1929, Page 7

STATE TRADING

NECESSARY PROVISIONS.

(Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee.)

11l the course of one of the “Political Talks ” he contributed to the newspapers a little while ago, Mr David Jones, the member for Mid-Canterbury and Chairman of the .Meat Board, a politician of very considerable consequence, was good enough to give the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee prominence among his large-lettered headlines. It was not until he readied the concluding paragraphs of his “talk,” however, that he remembered he had not made himself acquainted with either the purpose or the principles of the Committee. “Is the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee,” ho then asked, “ sanguine enough to believe that the Government will abolish the Arbitration Court, sell the State coal mines, discontinue State Eire and Accident Insurance, insist that every trading department of the State and every municipally owned en terpriso be classed as a person for taxation purposes, and wipe out con trol by AI eat and Dairy Boards?” Mr Jones rounds off this torrent of interrogations by assuming that the Prime Minister has “ smelled the powder . . .

and qualified his previous utterances bv saving lie is against ‘ undue interference ’ by the State.”

THE' PLAIN ISSUE. Sir Joseph Ward may be left to jpeak for himself in regard to the effect the smelling of the “ powder ’• may have had upon his attitude towards the State’s interference with private enterprise. It can be said at once,, however, that the Nineteen Twenty-Eight Committee is not sanguine enough—nor foolish enough—to believe that the present Government, or any other Government, will aboli-s’* he Arbitration Court, sell the State •oal-mines, discontinue State lire air 1 State accident insurance, or wipe out control by Meat and Dairy Boards. It is in a little doubt as to what Mr Jones means when he asks il it “ would insist that every trading departmen' of the State and every municipally owned enterprise be classed as a per son for taxation purposes.” If he wants to know whether the Committee would insist upon State and Municipal trading enterprises being made subject to the same charges and taxation is private enterprises are, its answei is in the affirmative. State coal-mines and State insurance, of course, must be subject to these conditions, and all that is required of the Aleut and Dairy Boards is the definite removal of their absolute control powers, which the Meat Board lias held in abeyance and the Emit Board has grotesquely bungled.