The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY. AUGUST 1, 1930 THE BLIGHT OF HIGH TAXATION

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1039, 1 August 1930, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND FRIDAY. AUGUST 1, 1930 THE BLIGHT OF HIGH TAXATION

Ife there really any dire need of extracting from the pockets of the people this year an additional £2,000,000 in taxation? This question was raised in a less direct form by the Hon. W. Downie Stewart, Reform member for Dunedin West, in the House of Representatives last evening, and answered with admirable lucidity and fine effect. And the answer (as it has been emphasised in this column time and again since the Prime Minister s outburst of pessimism and departmental croaking) was that there is no real necessity for the United Government’s highpitehed tariff and taxation proposals and exactions. A moderate scale of revised impositions would suffice to carry the Dominion through a slough of temporary depression. The Dunedin legislator, who, in addition to the possession of more than ordinary political ability, has had intimate knowledge oi: administrative finance while serving the State as a former Treasurer, still is the best financial critic in Parliament. Moreover, Mr. Stewart, who is as scrupulously fair in his criticism as he is resentful of unfair criticism, said plainly and fairly in the House last evening that the tax items of the Forbes "Budget appeared to him to he “niggling, spasmodic and haphazard, and not based on any broad general principle that distributes the burden over the whole community simply and equitably.” In these words Mr. Stewart has voiced the opinions and reasoned conclusions of every taxpayer who has denounced the Government for its stupid (because dangerous) policy. As members of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce declared in vigorous terms yesterday, the United Ministry in a quake of panic has taken the worst possible cou”se toward hindering the Dominion’s progress instead of attempting to do everything practicable to help industry and promote enterprise. In a word the Government is a hindrance and not a help to the country. Not even the penetrating logic of Mr. Downie Stewart, however, could persuade the Labour Party to support the Reform Opposition’s no-confidence motion in the Budget debate. The party respects him for his outstanding ability and close study of economics and political affairs, but it refused to follow the lead he gave to Labour last evening, although it must have known that his guidance was along the track of wisdom and duty. Labour voted to keep in office an administration that, in its fiscal and financial exactions, has assaulted the best interests of a working community. Most of the Independents saw the light and marched with Reform toward it. The Labour Party extinguished it and chose to plod along with the Government in darkness. Such is the inevitable outcome of a three-party system in national politics, and the effects of it today in this country are such as to cause business men and many others to urge a fusion of the two strong parties in rivalry, thus making Labour the official Opposition with no abnormal power or opportunity to bargain with the Government on a selfish party basis. It ought to be noted and remembered by everybody that Mr. Downie Stewart’s protestive argument on the Government’s financial policy is serious common sense. The United Administration, which persisted about twenty months ago in making “foolish and reckless promises that it would reduce taxation, reduce expenditure and reduce interest rates,” has expanded loan expenditure, increased taxation, and has borrowed and spent money in ways that are both unwise and unsound. The railways are losing over a million pounds a year, but still the Government goes on spending more on yic construction of lines that will never pay the interest charges on capital expenditure. The Administration has bought estates at stiff prices, and at great cost has placed only a few settlers on the land at a time, as Mr. Stewart has pointed out, when the values of products and land are falling. In short the United Ministry which cannot move except when propped up. on Labour’s stilts, has done all the things it vowed it would not do and has done such things very badly. Apparently the same policy is to be continued until the triennial end of the present Parliament or at the quickest term of the country’s release from “irritating exactions and staggering expenditure,” until Labour has squeezed the United lemon’ dry. It is to be hoped at the worst that even the Labour Party, for the sake of the people it represents, if for nobody else, will compel the Government to reduce its bushranging bill of taxation and get nearer to the fulfilment of its own promises.