COMMONWEALTH LAND TAX.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10084, 5 September 1910, Page 4

COMMONWEALTH LAND TAX.

The Labour Ministry of the Commonwealth does not intend allowing the grass to grow under its feet—nor under anybody else's, if it can help it. The rights of property, if they be in land, are no longer to be regarded as sacred, and the screw of taxation is to be so rigorously applied that men possessed of estate will be glad to realise at any price and flee the country. A deputation of pastoralists recently waited upon Mr Fisher, and urged that if the land tax were to be imposed in the form suggested it would spell ruination to hundreds of farmers. The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth was adamant. He stated plainly that,his Government had laid down a policy of confiscation, and that policy could not be departed from. To him the contemplation of men being overwhelmed in financial disaster was nothing so long as the theorists of the large cities are propitiated. Time alone can tell what the result will be. There are so many millions of acres of land in Australia practically uncultivated that the driving of capital out of the country may have a very serious effect. A vigorous policy of settlement is a most desirable thing in any young country. But no policy which does not offer security of tenure has the slightest prospect of survival.