HIGHER RATES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 September 1938, Page 5

HIGHER RATES

MR WAITE ON PAYMENTS BY FARMERS EFFECT OF SOCIAL SECURITY SCHEME (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. A declaration that the Social Security Bill would sound the death-knell of the Farmers’ Union’s hopes to obtain derating of farm lands was made by the Hon F. Waite (Otago), in the Legislative Council yesterday. “There is no question that hospital rates, both in the cities and in the country, must- go up.” he said. “That is inevitable.” Hospital boards had made calculations consequent upon the introduction of the Bill, and they had come to the conclusion that there must be varying increases in the rates. The New Plymouth Hospital Board expected an increase of something like 42 per cent. The Hon J. K. Archer (Canterbury): “They will go up without the Bill.” Mr Waite: “But they will go up at an increasing rate under the Bill.”

Mr Waite said that the farmer would pay the ordinary Is in the £1 in direct taxation. He would pay indirectly another Is in the £l, and he would pay, say, 6d in the £1 for unemployment relief; nobody believed that the 35,000 people who were now drawing money from the Employment Promotion Fund would disappear overnight. In addition he would have to meet heavy increases in taxation on the land. He knew also that after April 1, he must Register his wife, and pay a registration fee for her of 5s Had the farmer to pay a mileage fea if he called a doctor to his home? asked Mr Waite. There had been some mention of a rate of 4s a mile, charged one way, and of the farmer having to bear half the cost. That point also required clearing up. It looked as if the legislation would result in the poorer type of doctors serving the country districts, and the best doctors going to the large centres. The Hon F. E. Lark (Auckland): “That is an indictment of the doctors!” Mr Waite: “No. Just as there is varying ability in any group of people, so there is among doctors, and we know the tendency is for the good doctors to gravitate towards the centres.”