The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1927 STATE TREASURER’S LAMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 113, 3 August 1927, Page 8

The Sun 42 Wyndham Street, Auckland, N.Z. WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3, 1927 STATE TREASURER’S LAMENT

IT cannot be said of the Minister of Finance that “lie is the merriest tax collector since the clays of Robin Hood.’’ The Hon. W. Downie Stewart’s Budget is anything but a record of cheerful arithmetic. It merely represents an accountant’s narrative of poor business and uninspired government, with the story embellished by the wily arguments of the politician in order to save the reputation of the responsible Administration. By far the best feature of a disappointing financial statement is its assurance that there is to be no increase in taxation. Its worst feature indubitably is the fact that taxation is not to be decreased. Whatever else may be said for or ag'ainst the Reform Ministry (and a great deal could be said on both sides), the present high scale of taxation is the fundamental problem in politics and in the everyday activities of the Dominion. Its reduction is the acid test of government. Thus Mr. Stewart’s lugubrious admission that the Government does not see its way clear to reduce taxation this year is really a confession of the Government’s failure. His defence lacks vitality. It is old and stiff in its joints. This is not to be wondered at; the cause of all the trouble is still the World War, And the Minister of Finance makes the most of a twelve-year-old excuse for abnormally high taxation. He emphasises the fact that war-debt and war-pension charges absorb about 30 per cent, of the total taxation revenue, or rather more than the whole sum of land and income tax. It is an effective point in defence of the Reform record, and it is right and fair that the Treasurer should drive it into the thick skins of Iris critics; but it is not a complete argument against hostile criticism. We may give the Government an honourable discharge for all expenditure and indebtedness arising out of the war, and still have scope left for assailing the Administration on the bad results of its control of the Treasury. Though Mr. Stewart mentions it without emphasis, the charges on the State’s ordinary debt are now higher annually than those exclusively occasioned by the war. Moreover, the incessant borrowings year after year aggregate almost twice as much as the sum of interest payable on past loans. It is trne that much of this serious indebtedness is reproductive, but not to such an extent as to justify complacency. Altogether, 45 per cent, of the State’s expenditure—nearly half of its total income—goes to the payment of war charges and interest on ordinary debts. This is almost as bad as the lamentable record of Sydney’s Labour City Council. A valiant effort has been made by Mr. Stewart to temper the financial wind to the shorn lamb. There is the old familiar talk about economy, about New Zealand’s enjoyment of relatively low taxation and generous exemptions, and about turning the corner at last to look upon the promised land of good times. The harangue is as soothing as the whoops of a jazz orchestra. The truth of the miserable business is that the Government is spending much more than it can see its way to raise from regular or legitimate revenue. Such economy as is effected by one hand is squandered by the other, and the prying tax-collector keeps on robbing Peter in order to pay Paul. Let it be noted that although immigration is supposed to have been suspended, it is proposed to spend £35,650 this year on advertising abroad the glories of this happy land; that the expenditure on “Hansard,” though few people ever read the stuff of which it is made, is to be increased to over £13,000; and that the vote for Bellamy’s is set down at £7,624. Politicians might well pay for their food and drink. So the tale of extravagance goes on, until it has become impossible to reduce taxation—the very essence of true economy. If ghostly wanderers from the paradise of Conservatives were to return to the glimpses of the moon, one could imagine them cuffing the ears of their incompetent successors.