HOSPITAL TAXES

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 17, 11 April 1927, Page 7

HOSPITAL TAXES

SYSTEM OF MAINTENANCE DOMINION METHODS PRAISED (From Our Own Coi~respondent.) PALMERSTON NORTH, To-day. Eulogistic reference to the Dominion’s system of hospital maintenance was made by a visitor to Palmerston North in the person of Mrs. Stranger, of Melbourne, who is a prominent hospital auxiliary worker in connection with the Melbourne Alfred Hospital, and who has taken the opportunity to visit several institutions of such nature since her arrival in New Zealand. The visitor was favourably impressed with the method of maintenance in that the requisite sum was raised by taxation and Government subsidy. She explained that in Melbourne, and as far as she knew in Australia, hospital maintenance depended in large measure upon the voluntary contributions of the public. The Government made a grant to each hospital, but it usually did not exceed two-thirds •of the amount required to maintain the institution and, there being no local taxation, the public were called upon to voluntarily subscribe the rest. The hospital auxiliaries, with one of which she was connected, dealt with the problem of raising funds or of securing gifts in kind to afford, the wherewithal to maintain the hospitals. Give freely as the public of Melbourne might, hospital administration was necessarily harassed from day to day through having no fixed income to meet commitments. So urgent was the need for voluntary assistance of the Melbourne hospitals that appeals were conducted monthly, apart from the annual appeal for money alone when £30,000 or so might be subscribed by an open-hearted public. Mrs. Stranger expressed the wish that the Dominion's system of framing estimates and levying taxation to meet them would be adopted by the authorities across the Tasinani