POLITICAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 9, 26 August 1911, Page 5

POLITICAL.

0 : WANGANUI .SKAT. ■ (Per Press Association.) Wanganui, August 25. Mr. George Hutchinson announces Jjimself as a candidate for the Wanganui seat at the next election as an opponent to tho Ward Government. In his announcement to tho electors he hints at a solution of industrial troubles, and will expound his proposals to the electors very shortly. EGMONT SEAT. • M.\ D. J. Hughes will stand for tho Egmont seat in the Government interest in the event of the Hon. T. McKenzie not yielding to the solicitations of the party to contest the seat. AN IMMIGRATION PROPOSAL. Notice of motion has been given by Sir Maurice O’Rorke: ‘‘That in the opinion of this Council that it is desirable that the Government should appoint two emigration officers—one in Ireland and one in Scotland—to facilitate emigration from those countries to Now Zealand, such officers to be under the control of the High Commissioner,, and not to exceed in any one year the number of emigrants he might have authorised; that each emigrant of twenty-one years of age should receive forty acres of freehold land in Now Zealand, and half that amount of land for children over ton years of ago; that the salaries of these emigration officers should be at the' rate of £SOO per annum, terminable after the first year .of employment by three months’ notice from the High Commissioner in London.”

• EDUCATION. Two motions connected with education were tabled by Mr. T. M. Wilford pn Thursday. He will move that legislation bo introduced this session to provide that all members of Education Boards be elected under the same franchise as members of borough councils, and ‘ ‘that where the average attendance in a school lias been lowered through an epidemic no alteration shall be made in the committee's annual capitation.” “That a committee be appointed to enquire, into tho question of the expediency of establishing a State bank for the Dominion; the committee to have power to call for persons and papers, and to confer with any similar committee appointed by the Legislative Council, is the motion which Mr: J. F. Arnold lias given notice to move. ‘ V • * • • ' LAND AND INCOME TAX LAW. • The taxation of the income of husL ndki-, carried on in New Zealand by ag'dnts is the subject of a series of clauses in the Land and Income Tax Assessment Bill. They provide that income tax is payable on transactions av fibre tho contract for sale and position is made outside Now Zealand. Where Maori • land is owned jointly by Maoris and Europeans the latter will be liable to land tax in reibbet of their interest. The tax on label owned by half-castes or by Maoris or half-castes, and occupied by other persons, is to be paid by the occupiers.

MENTAL HOSPITAL TREATMENT

Allegations of brutal ill-treatment are made by Richard James Feltus, some time,.an.inmate of the Auckland Mental Hospital, in a petition, presented to the Legislative Council yesterday. He declares that an attendant on one occasion seized him by the neck and brutally assaulted him, while another day he was dragged naked by the heels down a flight of stone steps to his cell, and was_ also put under a tap and whacked with a broomstick. He also says he was violently assaulted several times by a dangerous lunatic.