NOTES FROM PARLIAMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1916, Page 4

NOTES FROM PARLIAMENT.

RESERVED CRITICISM. (From Our Own Correspondent). Wellington, Thursday. Members of the House will have other opportunities to criticise the Budget, and they are not likely to let them pass by as they did the one that ofTe"ed last evening. Many of them have given expression to their opinions in the lobbies and elsewhere and it wou'd seem they are fairly unanimous in their approval of the broad outlines of the Minister's finance. Exception is taken to the high margin of interest the Government wishes to establish, with the exemption of investors from the payment of income-tax —as was taken in the' c:ise of the Soldiers' Settlement Bill yesterday—and also to the limitation of the "confiscation" of war profits to 45 per cent. The advocates of a local war loan profess to be satisfied with the issue, of war bonds for' an indefinite amount, and the Labor members, who are not easily satisfied 111 the matter <-f taxation, admit that ltj grievous lurdens are being laid upon the s::ou"iUrs of the poorer classes. Outside criticism on the whole is distinctly favorably Sir Joseph Ward has received many eon gvatulatorv messages, quite a-number coining from Australia asd several from London, and he expresses himself as well pleased with the reception given to his proposals. Those will be made plainer when the required legislation h brought clown, and perhaps some of them will be modified in details; but the principle of a sound finance will lie maintained and the virtue of self-reliance practised as far as prudent and feasible.