THE SOCIALIST LEADER

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1931, Page 2

THE SOCIALIST LEADER

(Otago “Daily Times.”)

Mr Holland is the first party lender

in New Zealand, who has had the opportunity of addressing the electors in Dunedin in the spacioits

'Town Hall, and the long interval that has elapsed since any political leader was last heard in this city, and the interest in general politics that has teen aroused by recent occurrences, combined to secure, for him the com-

pliment of a very .large audience on Thursday night. The most ardent of the Socialists in the community must, however, have experienced a sense of disappointment concerning the use Mr Holland made of the occasion. They will hardly have been entertained by the delving into historical records in which Mr Holland engaged

and for which he has always exhibited a marked penchant, nnd they may ey.en lliave become somewhat bored with his long narrative of the events of the past session, though it was, it may be conceded, necessary to his purpose that he should recall the principal features of the legislation that was passed. But even those, upon whose emotions he played with all his skill he could command as the victims of what he described as on * en*

ft*rtee*ned” movement,<; cannot hove helped feeling that he failed completely to grapple with the realities oi the position with which the Govern-

ment is confronted. His assertion, without a sornp .of evidence to support it, that the repression frorn which the country is suffering has . been “largely manmade” does not count for very much against the positive fact that, mainly. through the decline in the prrces for her products, the national income of the Dominion lias shrunk by very many millions of pounds. What the total shrinkage may be can only be estimated. The ' Department of Economics of Canterbury. .College, in a bulletin that 'fras issued a few days ago, has computed that, upon present indications, the decline in toal income is about 37* millions. Even if the shrinkage is not represented by such a huge figure as that', it ! is certainly of dimensions so great as to constitute a formidable warning to the Government and to the country that they cannot go on spending in the way they have been doing. Mr Holland was careful to avoid making any statements so foolish as that to which one of his lieutenants committed himself on the previous evening in saying that “never was there a time in the history of New Zealand when wages should,' and could be, day,” but he equally carefully ignored the fact that ' the depression—-a “temporary depression’ ’ he described it, arid it is to be hoped he has correctiy so described it, though we cannot accept him as an authority on the subject— is the most serious with which the country has ever had to cope and that public and private retrenchment have been rendered imperatively necessary. ...

Every thoughtul person who is not a politician must have recognised that it is only through the exercise of drastic economies that the effects of “the economic blizzard,” as Mr Snowden has called it, can be met; If Mr Holland were not a politician, who perceives in the circumstances of the times an opportunity for the creation of a certain amount, of political capital, ho would be forced to a realisation of the need for a pharp reduction in the cost of the public services. It is perfectly idle to suggest that the amount by which the cost of the public administration will be curtailed through a reduction in the salaries and wages of public servants could, have been secured by an increase in the taxation of incomes. Mr Holland pretends to believe that incomes provide a fertile field for taxation. He quoted that night the “assessable incomes” of the general elftss of taxpayers as amounting in 1920-30 to £51,948,000. But he omitted to inform his audience that it is not upon “assessable incomes that taxation is levied. The “assessable incomes'’ include incomes that are exempt from taxation.

The taxable balance in 1929-30 was £32,344,560, and no one can reasonably doubt that it will be much below that figure for the current year. Moreover, it has to be remembered that the process of the increase of taxation may be carried to a point at which it. will cense to produce any increased yield. It is a circumstance of profound significance that, >whi|B an increase of 10 per cent, was made in the taxation of incomes last year, the yield has fallen by £600,000. This fact in itself shows the hollowness of the argument that an additional £1,300,000 of revenue could be obtained by heaping fresh burdens upon the income tax payer . Even it an additional sum of that magnitude could be extracted from the payers of income tax, it is obvious that it would be secured at the expense of increased unemployment. Taxation is so heavy in . the Dominion at the present time that it is difficult to believe that it can he appreciably increased except at the cost of the infliction of serious injury upon industry. The Department of Economies of Canterbury College observes in the bulletin from which we have already

quoted; “It may yet have to be considered very seriously, whether we are hot spending public money, which the tax payers must find, on a scale and on, services which wo simply cannot afford, and collecting money from the community to spend on its behafl when the community would be far better off if.it had that money to spend for itself.” The comments which Mr Holland offered on other phases of the political situation scarcely call for iromec*. iate attention. One remark, however, may be noticed. He would not be Mr Holland if he talxed darkly about some “deliberate attempt to create a great industrial upheaval” which would confound and divide the workers. The Alliance of Labour certainly conveyed the impression, from its decisions at a recent conference, that it would not be averse from fomenting an industrial disturbance. But it is not to be .supposed that the Alliance is one of the conspirators whom Mr Holland’s imagination has pictured. To this subject his allusion was as cryptic as it was to some alleged “practical boycott” of himself by the Dunedin press.