THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

Putaruru Press, Volume VI, Issue 243, 28 June 1928, Page 4

THE LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION.

Labour is committed neither to Protection nor to Free Trade, but to taking as many taxes as it can off one section of the community and putting them on to the other section. This is not how it expresses the matter, but it is certainly what its policy comes to, and it is to be remembered that Mr. Holland talks not merely of reducing indirect taxation, but of abolishing it altogether. He is determined also to make all the capital he can out of the present difficulties and anxieties (produced by world-wide causes) of landholders—and then, if the opportunity presents itself, to add to them tenfold by further instalments of Socialism. Labour’s land platform, he says, includes “ full recognition of the owner’s interest in ■ all land, including tenure, rights of sale, transfer and bequest,” but he says also that it includes breaking up the larger land properties by taxation, which in practice—if the country ’is ever foolish enough to allow Labour to practise a land policy—means treating everyone as an enemy who happens to hold more land, of whatever quality, than Labour thinks, or chooses to say, any man should. Christchurch Press.