PARLIAMENT.

Oamaru Mail, Volume IV, Issue 1311, 19 June 1880, Page 2

PARLIAMENT.

Wellington, June 18,

In the ; -Legislative Council to-day, In reply to Mr. Wood, the Attorney-, General said the time for sending in the property assessment returns had been extended to August Ist, and new forms will be issued.

The Land Transfer Act Amendment Bills wire read a third time.

The Impounding Bill having been passed through Committee, and a quantity of minor business disposed of 3 the Council rose at 3.35.

/n the House of Representatives today, Mr. Seymour brought up the report of the Local Bills Committee on the Oamaru Harbor Bill, finding that the Bill was a local Bill. He also brought up a report on the Invercargill Drillshed Commissions Bill, finditig that-it is a local Bill, and that the Committee can see no objection why the Bills should not be proceeded with;

Replying to Mr. Stevens, Mr. Rolleston said the Waste Lands Boards had authority, under the 48th section of the Land Act, to withhold from sale 17,000 acres of the Te Aroha Block, for the purpose of selling it to Messrs. Grant and Foster, or perso.ns to be brought to the Colony through their efforts. It required the Governor's approval, and that had not vet been given'. The block really was yet available for any one. Mr. .Moss resumed the debate on the noconfidence motion. He said the present condition of the Colony was what they had first to consider. In the expenditure for the last .nine months a deficiency of L861)000 had arisen. The deficiency of the Grey Government was L 133,000, making a total of L 995,000 in round numbers. To make good that deficiency the Treasurer had recourse to the public works fund. When that fund failed, he wished to know what was to become of the country. What would have been the consequences if the public works leap had not been floated. The country was literally bleeding at their feet. With such a state of matters as that, the Government ought to welcome an organised Opposition, and meet them as men honestly desiring to face the difficulty. However, they had not done this. They desired to stamp all appearance of an Opposition out of existence. They sat upon these benches as silent as if they were quite indifferent to the consequences. They might go on piling up new taxation, but the more they did that the less he belieyed .they would get. Taxation was now being taken from men's necessities. The gross total now was as much as the people were able to contribute. The expenditure in excess of revenue, apart from taxation, was LSS3,C-00 ; then, adding the new tax even, a deficiency of L 233,000 still remains. To meet this, L 50,000 was to. be taken off the salaries paid tq departments. That meant that poor and ill-paid servants would be still further oppressed, but the well-paid heads would escape. The remaining deficiency of L 17.000 w;as to be manipulated in some extraordinary way so as to transform it into a surplus of L 41,000. The plan proposed was a mere subterfuge, and he called upon them to face the position fairly and admit at once that there was a deficiency. They were told great savings were to be made in the expenses of the country, but would the Government tell them where that saving was to bo effected. No real information on the point had as yet been given. Regarding the great native difficulty, he had no hesitation in saying that the. member for Rangitikei (Sir W. Fox) was greatly to blame, and he was also to be blamed for the existing financial difficulties. The Government had taken LIOO off the allowance of LJfOO to the chief Paul, of Auckland, a man who, like his father, had rendered signal service to the European population in early days ; and, on the other hand, a similar sum was proposed to be added to the salary of the Chairman of Committees. Again, it was alleged that there were 500 men employed on the Waimate Plains for weeks making a road now fqund to lead into a swamp, and which was consequently utterly useless. Mr.' Bryce denied that the statement as to the value of the road in question was correct. Major Atkinson did the same. In proceeding, Mr. Moss criticised the action of the Government in connection with the native affairs on the West Coast, and of native lands generally. It had been asserted that the late Government had spent all the loan, but as a matter of fact the present Government had had L 3,200,000 to deal with. The House ha.d long known of the corruption of the Native Department, but when in 1865 the Auckland Provincial Counoil took the matter up, the Government of Sir Donald M'Lean burked enquiry, It was the Southern members' faith in Sir Donald M'Lean which had prevented reform long ago. . Colonel Trimble spoke. in favor of the Government. He believed that twothirds of the agitation throughout the country with respect to the repeal of the property tax . was simply a device got up for party purposes. A great deal of absurd talk had been-indulged, in about the land tax and the state of affairs in the Home country was quoted in support of the absurd theories. . He went on to argue that the property tax was a fair and legitimate incidence of taxation, while the tax as it had been imposed was -not, ■ When the whole policy of the Government was brought down, he had little doubt but that they would be prepared to'.'accept suggestions for modification in the details of "their proposals.- The di versity between the tax proposed on Maori and European lauds was merely a matter of detail, it did not affect the principle, which he took to be as asserted" by the proposal to tax Maori lands at all, , that ail. laniJs both Qrown and Maori should bear a share of the public burden, He had all along argued that property in a particular locality, whether. it belonged to a Govern-, uient or a private individual, should bear the burdens of that locality. The proposal to take over the maintenance of the main roads was a right one. - Government had railways, and it was only right that they should have control of the main roads. The expenditure on the West Coast was next referred to. The expenditure, no doubt, was large, but it was a necessity. The L 280,000 per atinupa for the griped Constabulary must be incurred whether they made roads or not. Without these roads they could not settle in the district. The policy of the Government was only one to get rid of that expense, and until the gountry was-opened up, the constabulary would have to be maintained. Mr. Ballance agreed with the previous speaker that an armed force must for the I present be maintained on the West Coast. He differed with him in thinking that roads were all that was needed to settle the country. After these roads wefemade, and the Constabulary removed, what .then 1 The difficulty would not certainly cease. There was one remedy that ought to have be- n adopted. That was placing military settlers on the land, who would have held it by military tenure for a time at legist. The previous speaker has drawn-a distinction between land herp and at home. Recording to his showing the conditions ur»vo bscn-' altered, :i: d' the -sauie thing applies to these Colonies, In England 1

the disposition was to impose a land-tax, not in respect of the land having been held originally under military tenure, but in order to discourage the holding of large landed estates. The very same reasou exists in this Colony. It is not so much for revenue purposes as for economic purposes that a tax was required. It was not denied that Government had attempted retrenchments. There never was a Government yet that did not attempt retrenchment. It had not been alleged that.it was .only fair to tax laud—no one. ever said it was. When that was introduced, other changes of the incidence of taxation were proposed, and the land tax was only resorted to to adjust the incidence of taxation. The Opposition had agreed upon one thing, and that was that these financial proposals were not calculated to promote the welfare of the Colony. The country never asked for a property tax ; what it asked for was an all-round tax, which would make every man pay in accordance with his means. Instead of that they had got a tax with so many exemptions that it beoame most irregular and. oppressive. When they exempted furniture, who would not say that machinery and other things should be exempted, He could find very little saving in r the expenditure, despite what had been said to* the contrary. On the contrary there had been an increase and no saving. He objected to the constitution of the proposed Local Public Works Board. Undersecretaries, with whom the Minister for Public Works was associated, could not divest themselves of their character of servants at one moment and assume it the next. It had been stated that the Government had not repealed the ' land tax—on the oontrary they had doubled it, Yes ; but they had doubled the tax on improvements, and in that respect they had destroyed the virtues of the tax. The whole disarrangement of the finance of the Colony for which the late Government, had been so much blamed, was due to the falling j off in the land sales. It was a fact that a similar falling off had been noticeable throughout the whole of the Australian colonies, Referring to the accounts of last year, he said the late Government had been charged with leaving a deficit of L 131,000. That deficiency was largely made up of liabilities, or in other words accounts due but not paid, and were not paid yet. The real deficit for 1878*9 was L 19,000. Then again the land tax had been manipulated in a way which enabled the Government to taka credit for. what properly belonged to the financial year current during the term of office pf the late Government. The railway receipts had not been fairly dealt with. The account was made up to the 31st March, Immediately after that period very considerable increase would arise, consequent on the grain season. Had allowance-been made for that reasonable increase, the deficiency would have been considerably reduced. Then again certain departments had been considerably increased. There were the Supreme Court and Crown Lands. In the Justice Department, the increase wa3 L 5931. In the Customs a nominal saving was proposed of L 2574, harbors, etc., L 2999, which was principally in connection with the Hinemoa. In stamps and land transfer there was a proposed reduction of L 2345, but that was a ' reduction initiated by. the late Government. The .Native Department was a very considerable, but not by any means a. judicious retrenchment. Take the departments altogether, they found the total increase L 24,775, and the decrease L 18,375, leaving a balance of L 6400 on the side of the former, and that was what was called retrenchment. The result of the local financial proposals would be that the richer local bodies would thrive and be well supplied with money, while the poor bodies would be literally starving, For district roads, money was to be borrowed, from where he did not know. He agreed with the principle of making native lands bear their proportion of rates. By the exemptions in the property tax the Treasurer had lost L 170,000, and neglected to make provision for the deficiency. Then with respect to the beer tax. He maintained that. it had been made douhlei what it ought to have be@n. It ought not to have been more than 3d. During the six weeks the tax at ljd was in force, it realised at the rate of L 40,000, and he argued that at 6d it would realise Llßo,ooo> which was considerably in excess of the arnqunt of the deficit it was purposely imposed ta meet. Then again the exemption of ships was reprehensible, and the tax on machinery was to be deprecated; A large amount of the machinery of the Colony was lying idle, and the effect of this tax would. be to crush out Colonial industry altogether. He next dealt with the question of loans. The persons by whom the late loan was floated cried down their securities in order to make money out of their investments. A loan which floated at 81i had now reached 9,5j thereby making a very handsome profit to stockholders and capitalists. Government ought to have shown more firmness in the floating of this loan in the first instance, He concluded by stating that the Government had in reality adopted,the proposals of its predecessors.

Mr. Reader Wood oontended that there had been no attempt to consider the proposals as a whole. He would like to know who was notresponsiblefor the presenfcposition of affairs. It was begun in 1870 by Sir Julius Yogel, continued' by' Major Atkinson, carried on by the member for the Thames. He would counsel one and all not to quarrel abqut the past, but to set honestly about endeavoring to remedy the present. The question was not as to the best theory of taxation; they had a far more serious question of responsibility to face. He would ask if there is anyone who could say that the proposals as a whole were beneficial to the country, The Government itself would not. The truth was. that these proposals were in many respects forced upon them as a st§rn necessity. In the present situation of affairs two courses might be taken. The Treasurer had laid the wound bare, and exposed it in all its native deformity to the true position of affairs. The one course open to them was very simple. It was to sneer at the whole affair, and go on as we haye been doing, and living luxuriously," The other oourse was for them to say that for the last ten years they had been borrowing, money for purposes which had riot, as was expected been reproductive, and they must put their foot down fairly to stop this..: In that case the deficiency must come out of the pockets of the taxpayers. By that means they might get out of their difficulties, but the Government did not propose to do. that, although they proposed to go iq direction. What would a private individual say if he got into such a mess ? He would get rid of all unnecessary labor around him. One out of every eight of the population being engaged in the Civil Service—wh?,t did that suggest ? Why, it suggested that these njen should he got rid of. The Native Minister had gone further in that direction than apy. of his colleagues, and yet his department was more efficient than ever. What they wanted was greater energy in earning, and greater economy in spending. That simply meant increased taxation and greater retrenchment, It appeared to him that the Treasurer firopoged to impose more taxation than here was any necessity for. He .could not help thinking there was some mistake in the Treasurer's calculations. Local finance was next alluded to, and he condemned the scheme as as vicious a, pro- ! posal as could well be. He would ask them to consider what was the real meaning, of the motion. It was this : these men (the Opposition) get on to tl'joje 'benches. H<; \vo'al<| b$ uo party to th;\t,

Mr. Pyke thought str. were written in sympathetic ink. It was impossible to know oti which side he was. He would, as a mattef of duty to his constituents have to vote for thfe amendment. The Government- proposal involved the annihilation of [ local self-government and other most disastrous results, tending to increase greatly the existing depression. The property tax was iniquitous, the more so for the exemptiop of personal property. The abolishing of the subsidies was a breach of faith for which Government alone were responsible. Dr. Wallis next addressed the Houso,. criticising the proposals, and announced V his intention pf supporting the motion. \ The House adjourned at 12.30. <,