THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1921. A COMPLEX SUBJECT.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4306, 19 August 1921, Page 2

THE Hauraki Plains Gazette With which is incorporated THE OHINEMURI GAZETTE. Motto: Public Service. MONDAY, WEDNESDAY, & FRIDAY. FRIDAY, AUGUST 19, 1921. A COMPLEX SUBJECT.

Although the Waihou and Ohinemuri Rivers Commission, 1921, has by no means completed its work, sufficient evidence has been put forward to impress the uninitiated with the great complexity of the subject, and its far-reaching interest. To the layman the amount of abstruse technical and scientific data, submitted is somewhat bewildering, and the commissioners, being laymen, will have a difficult task in sifting out all-, the evidence and coming to a conclusion. They will have to determine whether or not mining has had a detrimental effect on farm lands, whether navigation has suffered, and, if so, whether the mining interests should continue to contribute, and to what extent, towards the improvements scheme. The benefits the landholders have or may receive.as a result of the stop-banking and drainage works, the nation’s benefit, and the damage these interests may have suffered wilt have to be weighed up as factors. But when all is said and done—which may not be till well on in September—rthe Commission will have to get down to “tin tacks,” or in more classical language, the principles of taxation, and base its report upon two fundamental grounds, namely, benefits received and receivable, and the ability or otherwise of the taxpayer to pay—the letter part of the equation is particularly important in view of the intention of the- Public Works Department to spend nearly three-quarters of a million pounds on various works in this district, mainly on the Hauraki Plains. Th,e expenditure will be reproductive, and that at no very distant date, but in the meantime the financial burden will be heavy.