Great Leveller

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 431, 13 August 1928, Page 8

Great Leveller

Licensing and the Budget

(THE SUN’S Parliamentary Reporter.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. LICENSING is the Great Leveller of politics. It makes the lion lie down with the lamb, and Ministers vote with Labour men, which happened during the past week. On Mr. J. McCombs’s Preferential Voting Bill, in its essence a Labour measure, three Ministers were found voting with the Bill on the losing side. Only their affiliations on the licensing question could explain it.

TVHNE, wool and weeds formed a r trinity of -which much was heard. The wine was spilled, in a political sense only, by the introduction of Mr. H. G. R. Mason’s Licensing Amendment Bill, designed to assist winegrowers. The wool entered the field because Labour men asserted in the Budget debate that soaring profits on wool escape taxation; and weeds appeared in an abundant crop when, on Thursday evening, every farmer in the House rose to express his views about what should and should not be regarded as noxious weeds. Just as many weeds are perennial so the discussions thereof are peren-

passage lor all Its provisions, but he made it clear, in a very able exposition of its points, that the -wine industry was seriously in need of assistance, that it was crushed and ignored between the opposing brewing and prohibition industries, and that he was prepared to consider a committee investigation with a view to any compromise that would accomplish at least part of his aims. Under the circumstances it was palpably poor tactics for Messrs. Lysnar and Eliott to call for a division and force members of their own party, against their will to vote against the Bill lest their constituents suspect some infringement of no-license pledges. The second reading of the Bill was carried, but this might just as easily been effected on the voices. In committee the Bill will no doubt be substantially re-shaped. Neither the provision for the sale of wine in a quart bottle, nor that empowering winegrowers to open retail establishments on their present licence fee of £l, is likely to survive, but Mr. Mason will doubtless be content with a modification allowed wine-growers to co-oper-ate for selling purposes. ON THE WOOL TRACK

nial in the House. Hour after hour went by on Thursday night when members pictured the dismal plight into which farmers would be forced were the provisions of the Act enforced to the letter. They told of Californian thistle rising almost from under the blade of the plough; of the West Coast’s solitary blackberry bush, that extends, as Mr. H. E. Holland put it, from Karamea to Ross; and of dense, hoof-rotting fescue in the swamps of the North. Far the most striking of the speeches on this subject was that of Mr. T. D. Burnett, self-styled plain man from the hills, who certainly gave the Minister of Agriculture some plain talk in telling him his Bill was not worth the paper it was written on. Yet strange are the ways of politics, for in spite of the criticism the Bill went through unamended. Only in one of Mr. W. D. Lysnar’s trick divisions was the House called on to state its opinion, and in that a proposal to alter the Bill -was defeated by 45 votes to 3, FAULTY TACTICS Another division that might well have been dispensed with was on what a wit could be termed “Mr. Mason’s Wine Bill.” Even the sponsor of the measure did not hope to achieve a

Wool was flung into the rays of the political spotlight by Mr. H. E. Holland, Leader of the Opposition, very early in his fervent oration on the Budget. The hour was 4 o’clock, and the evening papers had just arrived. Hence Mr. Holland was at the outset talking mainly to Hansard and a not inattentive Press Gallery. It was to his credit that he was soon able to draw even the Prime Minister from his absorption in the day’s cables, and to overcome the consuming curiosity of members anxious to see if they had been adequately reported. Since Mr. Holland introduced the subject of wool, wool kings, and their share, fair or otherwise, in the revenue contributed to the coffers of the State, it folllowed that much of the subsequent discussion hinged on these questions. Without going into the merits of Mr. Holland’s criticism, which struck no new or startling note, one could say at once that he put up lucid and clear arguments. There followed the Hon. R. A. Wright, whose researches into Hansard led Mr. E. A. Ransom, the next speaker, to make a cutting remark to the effect that when a man began to look back into the musty files of the past his usefulness to the country was gone. Quite the best speeches of the evening, from the point of the view of the matter they contained and facts adduced in support, were those of Mr. D. Jones and Mr. M. J. Savage. On taxation Mr. Jones quoted telling figures. He showed that 15,000,000 acres of land in the South Island is Crown lease, farmed by men subject to income tax, not land tax, and he showed, also, that most big landowners would prefer to pay income tax to land tax. Further, he mixed his replies to criticism with what seemed sound friendly advice to the Government. Mr. Savage is still conducting a somewhat academic argument on the subject of dead-weight debt but he got on to a live issue in his examination of the Family Allowances which, he claims, with effective illustrations, has been ineffectively administered. The Budget debate will be resumed on Tuesday.