NOT A MANUFACTURE

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 12

NOT A MANUFACTURE

WHAT IS A NEWSPAPER? AUSTRALIAN DISCUSSION That a newspaper is not a manufacture was a point discussed during the hearing of the High Court action in which -Ve\v South "Whiles dailies won their contention that the State tax of Jd. a paper was a violation of the Constitution. Answering the Chief Justice, Mr. McTiernan, New South Wales Attor-ney-General, said a newspaper -was not like petrol or other manufactured articles. It was not an element in the fabric of the economic welfare of the community; it added nothing to economic welfare. _ Mr. Justice Huffy: Would you say a cinema film is subject to excise tax? It is a new educator, you know. It appeals to the brain through the eye. Mr. McTiernan: Photographs are a manufacture. Mr. Justice Duffy: Why are they more a manufacture than newspapers? Why is not one as much a product as the other? Mr. McTiernan: A newspaper is not produce necessarily for sale. The Chief Justice: If you limit it to newspaper in the ordinary sense it is plainly for sale. Mr. McTiernan: It is not from the newspaper itself that the proprietors get their profits. Every newspaper sold costs more to produce than the price charged for it. The Chief Justice: Not every one. Mr. McTiernan agreed that when a newspaper passed from one person to another, it was merely as a means of communication. The transfer of property was only incidental, and a matter of convenience. If a newspaper proprietor exhibited his newspaper outside his office free of charge he would be fulfilling all the functions of a newspaper publisher.

Mr. Justice Duffy: I think not. There would be no profit. (Laughter.)