BANK’S BIG PROFITS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 498, 30 October 1928, Page 12

BANK’S BIG PROFITS

CAPT. RUSHWORTH’S PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE CALLS OPPONENT’S BLUFF (From Our Own Correspondent) KAITAIA, To-day. A large audience attended at the Agricultural Hall, Kaitaia, last evening, to hear Captain H. M. Rushworth, the Country Party candidate for the Bay of Islands seat. He advocated all taxation being removed from necessities and means of production and placed on incomes. The Government land policy had been disastrous, there now being over 13,000 less employed on the land than five years ago, and this notwithstanding the fact that out of 57.000 immigrants, who had arrived in that time, 28,000 had gone on to the land. These, he said, were Government statistics.

Healing with the banking question, the speaker said the Bank of New Zealand was to all intents and purposes a State bank, being one-third State-owned since the days when Mr. Seddon came to the rescue and saved the bank from crashing. Four out of the six directors were Government nominees. The bank was run not for the State, but for the shareholders, who got colossal profits. He knew this personally, as he was a shareholder. The Country Party, said the speaker, advocated the State acquiring an additional two-thirds, and making it* a people’s bank. With regard to local affairs, and the claims of the present member to have got grants for the electorate, Captain Rushworth read from the New Zealand Year Book an official description of the manner in which grants are allocated, showing that they are automatic, and proportionate to the area and population. “It is a good bluff to pretend to be able to get grants, but if I believed that any private member could influence finance in this way I -would despair of justice in this country,” said the speaker in conclusion. He was accorded a vote of thanks.