MAIN HIGHWAYS FINANCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 743, 16 August 1929, Page 8

MAIN HIGHWAYS FINANCE

FE Government has committed itself to a grave and questionable principle in its attack on main highways finance. The attack comes from two points. First, the Prime Minister intends withholding the customary grant from the Public Works Fund. Both by promise and by precedent this grant is a definite pledge of fidelity to the motorists who have borne such an enormous share of the Dominion’s taxation in recent years. Its implied immunity from any exigent political demand is thus set out beyond dispute in the 1929 Year Book: “. . . The Construction Fund, which includes a transfer from the PuWic Works Fund, not less in any one year than £.200,000.” In spite of the virtual guarantee which has accompanied this grant in the past, Sir Joseph Ward proposes to withhold it and substitute loans to he repaid by the Highways Board. The Government thus modestly disclaims any serious responsibility for the roads of the country. The second phase is of even greater critical significance. The Prime Minister refuses to recognise the hitherto accepted principle that funds from special motor taxation should be applied to the specific purposes of road improvement. This viewpoint constitutes a serious breach of the professions with which the successive main highways and motor taxation enactments have been introduced, and which have alone served to make the increasing scale of motor taxation tolerable. The distinct assurances that the proceeds of the severe petrol tax instituted in 1927 would he devoted to the one purpose—road he fresh in the minds of all. With New Zealand motorists among the highest taxed in the world, and paying for their petrol a price that makes overseas motorists shudder, the Prime Minister must surely be charitable to those who regard his latest stratagem as indefensible. Naturally there are some extenuating circumstances. The first of them is the primary necessity for balancing the Budget. Sir Joseph has to he credited with remarkable courage in thus taking steps which must inevitably outrage public opinion. The effect on the plans of the Highways Board and the local bodies will be serious. If the hoard decides to pursue the plans it has so carefullv formulated it can do so only hv accumulating a load of debt. Heavily taxed motorists will thus have the barren satisfaction of knowing that road improvement of the next two, three and four years will still have to be paid for from future levies on the users. If the board, in the face of the Government’s attitude, decides to curtail its operations, both the hackblocks farmer and the urban or semi-urban motorist will suffer, and the vision of a paved highway all the way from Auckland to Hamilton will recede into an unpleasantly indefinite future. The price of political covetousness will seem to motorists rather more than they can hear.