NO MORE “BRAWLS”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 257, 20 January 1928, Page 1

NO MORE “BRAWLS”

MR. COATES’S POLITICAL WISDOM PLURAL VOTES FOR LANDOWNERS “I am not getting tangled up in any political brawl—l am in too many now,” firmly declared Mr. Coates yesterday when a settler on the North Shore suggested an amendment to the Counties Act in the direction of giving more votes to land-holders. A vote for every £IOO land value was mentioned, the proposer frankly stating that he was Scared that sectionholders. in the East Coast bays would outnumber the farmers in the county ridings in Which the bays are, and go voting for road loans and similar things. . Mr. Coates considered that the suggestion would undermine the oneman, one-vote idea and ISTew Zealand was a democracy. He would not touch the matter, but the remedy for the evil foreseen might be found in another way. . .. The Government had selected about 20 areas and three or four men in each were to report on the incidence of all charges and taxes in : the areas. The Government wanted to, stop the scheme of passing charges on to the man on the land. Many of them were getting so loaded up they could not carry on.

He knew of cases where farmers had got a reduction in valuations of £7 to £8 per acre, but the rates and other charges capitalised more than offset that. The charges had the farmers by the feet, and they could not move. The/ Local Bodies Loan Board had been designed to protect the man on the land. The motor taxes had the same idea—the making of users of facilities pay—and the petrol tax was another step in the same direction. The reports to be received might lead to other action.