The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1930 THE WORST BUDGET

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1033, 25 July 1930, Page 10

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET AUCKLAND FRIDAY, JULY 25, 1930 THE WORST BUDGET

lIONEST GEORGE FORBES lias flung his first Budget in the distressed faces of the taxpayers, and also has thrown with it the fate of his incompetent Government. It need not be pretended that the majority of the Dominion’s thinking people will have any other thought more dominant in their minds today than the hope that the racketeering document will be the last of its kind to be presented by the new Leader of the United Ministry. In every way the Financial Statement, which provoked embarrassed amazement and derision in the House of Representatives last evening, is the most drastic Budget that has ever been foisted upon this generation of New Zealanders. There is no harshness in revising an historic appellation to make it fit circumstances in modern politics: “Now Barabbas was”—a Minister of Finance. It may be that foolish people again will cry “let the man off!”, but those who take that charitable view of the latest example of political banditry will overlook the serious disservice that is going to be done to this country. Consider the bare truth! Without members or merit, a minority Government plans to extract from the taxpayers’ pockets an additional sum of £1,660,000 this year in direct taxation. Such is the proposal at a time when the secondhighest taxed country in the world has been striving hard for a year to overcome a severe slump in the export values of its products, and avert a ruinous depression. Such is the scheme of further political brigandage in the worst days of compulsory effort by men of business and industrialists to effect economies. The inexorable laws of economies make it clear that n<T worse economic evil can be inflicted upon any country than to overload it with new taxation, when that country’s earning power has been diminished. This law is flouted bv the United Government. Perhaps this is not surprising, for in seventeen months of pathetically poor administration the United Ministry has broken all its pre-election pledges. It is to be regretted that the bifurcated Opposition is so much concerned with miserable party interests that the two parties in it cannot see their staring duty to dismiss the Government without mercy. Unfortunately, professional politicians nowadays will do anything, even to the extent of surrendering cherished principles, to retain their jobs.

Doubtless it will be claimed for the United Administration that adverse circumstances left it no alternative to breaking its promises. To some extent there is reason in the claim, enough of it, indeed, to make the derisive laughter of the Reform Opposition in the House last evening appear as untimely cackling. Nobody should overlook the fact that a great deal of Mr. Forbes’s acute difficulty today is a legacy from Reform, also that it is probably lucky for that party that it has not been given the task of “mending broken crockery.” Let that be said in perfect fairness to the harassed Government. But fairness should not be wilfully blind to faults. The Government has erred not so much in the nature of its new taxation exactions as in their extent. In times of national stress it is reasonable, it is right, to tax luxuries and even ordinary amusements. It cannot be disputed that, whatever else goes wrong or short, New Zealanders, like Australians, will have their fun. They must now pay more for it and realise that high carnival days are over for a time. ,So there need be no whimpering about the new imposts on gambling at the races, merriment at the alluring cinema shows, and excitement at football and sport. Indeed, it is a pity that the beggared State could not have got a larger bite out of the fortune gathered easily and in abundance from the British Rugby team's tour. Tt is a good thing, too, that the Government has abandoned its stupid super-tax on land in favour of taxing well-to-do farmers on their farming income. Where the Budget assumes the worst form New Zealand has ever known is its lack of evidence as to the practice of State economy. Education now costs £4,500,000 a year, nearly half of that stupendous sum being spent on educating children to avoid hard work. Then there is no suggestion to cut down the extravagant expenditure on unemployment relief works. And the country is invited to take a leap in the dark on the proposal to suffer a poll-tax for the introduction of unemployment doles. In a word the Forbes Budget is so bad in its exploitation of every source of revenue that the Opposition should put the Government out and test the mind of the country on the Government’s filching policy.

AN EYE-SORE AT ROTORUA

BY deciding to suspend indefinitely constructional work oil the Blue Bath at Rotorua the Government, acting through the Public Works Department, has displayed lack of common wisdom and foresight. Drastic efforts are being made by administrators to decrease expenditure and harbour revenue, but a pruning policy can be carried to excess, and the sudden stoppage of an important but comparatively small work at a stage when it will remain little better than a rubbish dump reveals an unreasoning attitude that is nothing short of stupidity. In undertaking a commendable and urgent work the department, of necessity, has reduced a beautiful area in the very heart of New Zealand’s famous thermal gardens to an ugly chaos. Now it proposes to “down tools,” pack up, and depart, leaving things a hundred times worse than they were to begin with—leaving a Rotorua eye-sore as a monumental example of* ineffiicient political control. Had this suddenly-abandoned work been a community luxury the decision would be disappointing but nothing more; had it constituted additions and extensions to the valuable amenities of the Dominion’s premier resort and greatest touristattracting asset, the position would ho unfortunate but reasonable in view of the present financial stringency; but the reconstruction of the Blue Bath can be placed in neither of these categories. It is an enterprise involving one of Rotorua’s existing and all too skimpy artificial attractions, and it is of vital importance to the town and to a tourist business that supplies the Government with a rich and easily-earned revenue, that there should be no halt at this muddled stage. It would have been immeasurably better never to have begun the work at all than to drop it now, and in this connection it must be said emphatically that Cabinet had no colour of right to begin without proper financial provision for completion. Unless the Minister of Public Works, who, in this ease, seems to have carried thrift to actually wasteful extremes, can be induced to retract bis decision, the condition of a worldfamous spot with its abundance of healing and invigorating waters enclosed in out-of-date buildings—some of them are simply dilapidated shanties—henceforth will be a great deal worse than it has been for years past. Apart from the closing of the Blue Bath, Rotorua is left with an unsightly heap of builders’ materials with which to greet exacting visitors from overseas. Unquestionably this is a departmental folly calling for immediate remedy.