LESS LEGISLATION

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 304, 18 August 1932, Page 5

LESS LEGISLATION

(Press Assn.—

STRONG CRITSCISM PRIVATE ENTERPRISE IS HANDICAPPED BY PATERNALISM ^ "BRAMBLES OF SOCIALISM"

-By Telegraph — Copyright)

Auckland, Wednesday. Heayy responsihility for New Zealand's present difficulties was laid. at the door of State trading by Mr. A. Oman Heany, secretary j of the Associated Chamhers of j Commerce, in an interview to-day. Mr. Heany, who is visiting Auckland on business, expressed the o-pinion that one way to recovery could he found in the immediate repeal of the legislation that was strangling the energies of private enterprise. "We are making the profound blunder in this country of looking to the passing of further legislation to help us out of our troubles," said j Mr. Heany. "Actually, the legislaj tion of many years, increasing the I scope of State and local body inter- ' I ference with private trade, has al- | most crushed private enterprise, I which alone built this nation and the j Empire to which it belongs. Far j from private enterprise having failed this country, it is State control that has failed. Our proudest State trading concerns are taxing us out of existence. From Childhood to Death "Innumerable State trading departments, which are tax-free, have invaded tbe field of private business to an extent that is not generally realised. The State trades with the inI dividual throughout his life, from tending his teeth as a child to administering his estate when he is dead. Between times it acts as his pawnbroker, mines his coal, does his cartage, quarries metal for him, builds him houses, highways, bridges, viaducts, railways, tunnels, railway engines and carriages, power stations, lighthouses, public buildings and telegraph lines. "The State sells him a cover on his life, insures his person against accident, and his home and business premises against fire. It transports him and his goods by rail, road and water, ships produce for his consumption and markets by proxy his dairy produce, meat, frpit and honey. It produces and sells to him electric power, advertising space, telephcnes, directories, pliotographs, railway tickets, meals and magazines. It designs buildings for him, irrigates and drains his land, and oflfers for sale Parliamentary literature from its own printers recording for him the processes by which its misguided paternalism has given him all these things. Finally, after reducing him to an automaton, in whom initiative, enterprise and self-reliance are dead qualities, the State banks his money for him — if he has any left after paying the crippling taxes brought about by these State services, all of which can be carried out far more cheaply by private traders. Sources of Revenue "But that is not all. Local government steps in and trades with him, on a tax-free basis, in gas and gas appliances, coke, tar, electric light, power and its appliances, with slaughtering, drainlaying, transport hy land and water, housing, shop and office accommodation, refuse collection, lending libraries and nurseries. These are not half the things that the body politic does for the individual, but every State and local body trading activity just named, whether it is showing a profit or not, is piling up the burden of taxation. How? Because every new publicly-owned trading activity reduces the number of people making profits in that trade, and increased taxation over all is the result. "This sort of .government competition does not produce nvoney; it costs money. Only taxation of the trades and industries remaining in private hands can he looked to to yield that money. Consequently, each new government trading undertaking means more public expenditure and a contradiction in the sources of public revenue. Carry the process through' until the majority of our industries are in the hands of the State, and we shall have a race of paupers and a bankrupt nation. "We have been sauntering carelessly along the highway of Socialism, and now we have got iamong the brambles. What is sorely needed is a reversal of the legislative machine. If Parliament would devote a session, not to further law-making, but to undoing all th'e laws over fifty years that interfere with trade and prevent private enterprise from making profits, it would turn the lcey in the lock of internal recovery."