THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XII, Issue 3868, 24 July 1891, Page 2

THE FINANCIAL STATEMENT

X£r Buchanan's Speech-

We take the following extracts from Mr Buchanan's speech on the Financial from Hansard: — Sir : I think the Financial Statement now before the House is a very poor return for the hospitality extended to the honourable gentlemen at Eketabuna. Then, again, we take the meeting of the National Liberal Association m Dunedin, and which the Minister of Mines addressed at great length as chairman. lam not going to repeat the programme of the A ssociation which was given to the House last night by the honourable member for Elleamere, but the Hoase knows, and all the country knows that one of the foremost planks in the platform of this Association is the reduction of taxation on the necessaries of life. Taking all these thiugs together, how is it that the honourable gentlemen on those benches have so obviously failed in their duty to themselves and to those who have sent them here, and to the representatives of those people who maintain them in their places in this House ? Is it because they have no surplus ? Is it because there is no necessity for reduction of taxation ? The opinion the Premier gave expression to on one occasion, when addressing his constituents at Wanganui, was that, as the then taxation per head was only L2 2s 7d, the same as was paid by the Colony in 1870, a small amount of additional taxation through the Customs would not hurt them very much. But I think he forgets that, whereas in 1870 the male adults in the colony were 85 in every hundred of the population, in 1886—the date of last census that gives these particulars—the number of male adults had been reduced to 27 in every hundred, and I am perfectly certain that they cannot amount now to more than 25 per hundred. It is therefore obvious that the taxation of L2 2s 7d per head, ; which in 187 C j was very easily borne, is a very different thing to-day, when there are so many more women and children, so many more people who are not wage earners, in our population. But these honourable gentlemen had'a large surplus when they took office last January, and, although they professed to doubt its existence, they now have to admit that it amounts to ' no less a sum than L 148.000 ; and, making estimates for the next financial year, they admit an estimated surplus of L 257.000. There is the surplus, then, and they bivo a majority at their hack which enables them to do anything. How is it that they 1 have not fulfilled their promises to reduce taxation on tbo artisan and the labourer? And what have they given us instead of what theypro- '. mised ? They have given us a • progressive tax on property in land i and improvements, which must ' inevitably have the effect of reducing wages, and further depopulating the • Colony. 1 make this assertion with' ' out any hesitation whatever. I wish ' now to point out some of the utterI ances oi the Premier himself upon the question, in order to show his i inconsistency. They will be found : in Volume 53, page 354, of Hansard. ' What did the honourable gentleman say in 1885, as there recorded ? " There can be no doubt that anything which would tend to stop the influx of capital from the Home country or elsewhere into New Zealand would be a dire calamity to the colory, and to increase the property 1 tax beyond a certain amount would 1 have that effect inevitably." t And yet he now brings down a Financial Statement which not only increases the property tax, but prts i a graduated increase to an enormoas extent upon the best men who have been improving occupier's of the land. Let us turn back to the preceding page, 853. What does the honorable gentleman Bay there, referring to the previous speaker, who happened to be Sir George Grey, the member for Newton ? What does the honourable gentleman say of him ? " Then, the honourable gentleman talks about the land-tax; and he described the land-tax vhich he had once in this colony, but which the honourable gentleman, by his own extravagance of language, caused us to lose. When we had that tax the honourable gentleman attempted to inflict a gross injustice on a large number of people in the colony. He went about talking of a bursting-up tax on the land, and alarming the landowners of the colony." I suppose the honourable gentle-

man will admit that was the language he used on that occasion. Sir, who has alarmed the landowners of the colony now ? Who talks of a bursting-up tax ? Who is causing a departure of capital from the colony ? Why, 1 convict the honourable gentleman out of a record which he cannot for a moment deny. But the honourable gentleman has upon another occasion told the colony thai we do not want capital; that all we want is the men to go on the land. The truth, however, is that we never know what his opinion really is. But what does the Minister of Land—who should be the practical man on the Government benches—say as regards the land question ? In Hansard he says,— "Ishould like to know where the colony is to find population. We have only yet six or seven hundred thousand people in the colony, and if we took every man, woman, and child every shoemaker, tailor,- banker and merchant, and put them on the land, they would not be within call or • cooee' of one another."

They would not be within oall or "cooee" of one another. And yet this honourable gentleman ia now a member of a Government which proposes to go into the private buying of laud because there is not land enough for the settlers. Further on in the same speech he says,— " But I say it is a piece of nonsense to talk about; putting people with very j small capital on the land. The whole trouble we have got into at present with the deferred-payment settlers arises from the fact that a large number of them had not sufficient capital to work the land. You cannot possibly occupy land without some capital to work it, And there is another thing ; A number of people go on land who know nothing about cultivating it, and the consequence is that, even if they have sufficient - i **Ufchey cannot succeed." ca fc,""*"' * h * opinions of these These were i~. -«.„. a 8 re . gentleman a short time * b „,

corded in Hansard, and now we have them bringing down a graduated bursting-up tax to frighten capital away—inflicting what they then described to be a dire calamity on the colony." So much for that part cf the business. If it is not a burstingop tax—and it has been stated during this debate that it is not so —how is it then that this graduation tax is only applied to land ? It is perfectly, true we have a difference in the!

income tax as applied to tradeincomes on the one hand and those arising from professions on the other, but it cannot very well be called a graduation tax upon these two items. Then, again, we have had speeches upon the iniquity of the property tax on property which was not yielding a profit. Large quantities of merchandise, stock of all descriptions, machinery which there had been no time to set up—all this was grasped by the property tax And what are we having under the Government proposals as applied to land ? How would the present proposals have applied, for instance, to the Canterbury farmers during the last harvest ? There you had large numbers of the best settlers in the country compelled to turn their stock into the crops. Where was the profit then ? If it is an iniquity to apply the property tax to property not yielding any profit, surely the proposed graduation tax, under such circumstances, would be an iniquity piled upon iniquity. The honorable | member for Ashburton gave us the case of a large estate in Canterbury, which must have struck every mem - ber of this House with astonishment; but I think it would be very instructive to have the proposals applied to much smaller properties. Let us take some of the farms down in Canterburysay, of 250 acres each ; and there are many suoh farms worth, with improvements, J825 per acre and upwards. Summing up that, and applying these proposals to such a case, it means that the bursting-up tax would impose a heavy penalty upon a farm of admittedly very moderate area. Why is this so ? Do the Government really intend that their bursting-up tax shall apply to this ? Surely they could not have thought the matter out. Then, there is another point to which no reference whatever was made by any of the previous speakers —that in the exemption of improve* tnents to the extent of £B,OOO, or less, the owner of land in the towns would benefit to the extent of 9s 6d to every 5s obtained by the country settler. Let anyone examine the propertytax tables issued last year, and he will find that I am correct. Surely that is not a proper policy to follow. Surely, if you wish to place people on the land, that is not the line of policy that should be adopted by the Government. But what; is worse than all is the state of uncertainty to which it reduces all who wish to employ capital on the land. The Government apparently have tal en the very best care to inform t' -i country that this is only the thin edge of the wedge. We have it in the Governor's Speech; we have it emphasized in the Financial Statement ; and member after member on that side of the House, notably on the Government benches, has repeated the same thing, that, if the present proposals do not effect the objects aimed at, they will proceed a step further to secure them. Under these circumstances, imagine any one coming—and persons do occasionally come —from Home with LIO.OOO to L2O 000 to invest in land in New Zealand.

i Captain Russell—We do not want i men to come with a capital of I L 20.000. Mr Buchanan. —1 am told we do i not want men who have got capital. Very well, let us understand if that . is so, and we shall know what we are i doing. 1 say again that, it we imagi ine for a moment that anybody coming . into the country with his LIO.OOO or ) L 20,000 will invest his money in r land in the face of the present pro- | posals, I think we should be very much mistaken. He would be very k foolish to do so. Then, with regard r to those who are already here, and i have been spending every shilling of I profit which they have made upon ) the land, in employing labour and in other ways, it must be obvious that > they will, as far as they can, close up 1 their pockets, and invest their money i in any way rather than upon land, i About two wseks before the session • commenced I happened to take a trip i to the Coast, and stayed at one of the stations there for a night. There were about thirty swaggers theremen travelling about locking for work—and next morning they tooK their departure and went their way about the country over the muddy dirty roads. I got into conversation with several of them, and found that some of them had come down from Hawke's Bay. They told me they had applied for work in that district, and on two separate occasions were told by the employers that they did not mean to employ any more labour than they could help until they knew what the proposals of the Government were to be. We have now had these proposals, and is it at all likely that these people will spend their money ? I say, again, that the proposals of the Government will reduce wages, will oause great distress, and further depopulate the country. If the Gov ernment think it right to take back with a strong hand—that is what it means—properties bought a id paid for houestly under law, why should the Native 3 be blamed for having occasionally attempted to do the same thing ? Many years ago they sold the South Island at what now appears to be a ridiculous price, and who is therefore m hlame them if thev attemnt to set

their land back? Surely not the present government. But I wish to ask the Premier now, is there any exemption upon sums advanced on mortgage ? Supposing a perron invests the whole of his money on mortgage, is there any exemption on the sum so advanced ? I hope the honourable gentleman will take a note of it, and reply when he make a his general reply at the olose of this debate. So far as I can see, there is nothing in the Statement to indicate that there is any such exemption. Now, as to the income-tax, it has been stated that incomes derived from trade are to be taxed four times heavier than those derived from professions. I have prepared a table tpon this head shoeing that the assertion is substantially true.

It is perfectly right that there should be a difference ia this ta*, because it is true that a man earning his income by profession, unless he is able to save money, leaves nothing behind him when he dies Still, I think the Govern* • -'"Mildlsurely make some modimentor —•o.l. Juruingto fication in this propo*-.. ili » another phase of this question, w«„ general statement is made tha f large estates are increasing, and tha the land which has been sold by the Government has gone chiefly into the hands of the large owners. What are the facts of the case since 1883 ? Owners of 5 acres and under 10 acres, doubled since 1883; owners of 10 and under 20, increased 47 per cen ;

owners of 20 and under 80, increased 14 per cent; owners of 80 and under 40, 27 per cent; 1,000 acres and under 2,000, decreased 11 per cent. Surely this is not an indication that the large estates are increasing in number. Then, let us look at the flockowners —that is, the number of people who own sheep in any number:—From 1881 to 1889 flockowners of under suo sheep increased 50 percent; 500 and under 1000 increased 96 per cent; 1000 and under 2000 increased 65 per cent; 2000 and under 5000 70 per cent; 5000 and under 10,000 increased 18 per cent; 10,000 and under 20,000 13 per cent; 20,000 and upwards increased 9 per cent. Then, turning to another table, I find these facts: — Number of holdings per 100 adult males . In 1876 14-68 percent. „ 1881 1780 „ 1886 20-17 „ „ 1890 23-3

All these facts go to prove, without any possibility of contradiction, that, instead of the large holdings increasing in number, they are rapidly decreasing, aud that settlement is going on satisfactorily throughout the oolony. Yet we are to have a burst-ing-up tax—a tax which has practically not been adopted by any other colony in these seas. Surely the Government ought to pause before bringing this into effect. The next question I should like to refer to is the matter of the settlement of the land. The Premier, on the 12th February last, at Wangauui, made use of words to this effect: " that he would endeavour, by liberal land administration, to bring back the population to our shores." What did he mean by that ? If he meant anything he must have meant that our legislation in the past had driven population from our shores. Is it not notorious that the settlement effected by the last Government—that is,from 1887 to 1890—was double that effected by the previous Government, when the honorable gentleman who is now Premier was Minister of Lands? The figures are as follow: For the three years ending 80th September, 1887, the area of land settled was 741,000 acres; and for the similar period ending 80th September, 1890, the area of land so settled was 1,414,000 acres, and the average holding, including small grazing runs, was only 220 acres. Surely that does not indicate, as has been alleged, that our land legislation had caused the exodus, or that the land is falling into the hands of large landholders. These are the official figures, and cannot be contradicted. It has been said, however, that there has been a considerable amount of dummyism, and that, although nominally the land has been taken up in small areas, it has really been placed into the hands of the larger holders. Where ar« the transfers which must necessarily take place before this oan happen ? The records of the various Land Boards conclusively show that transfers have been comparatively few, and that the outcry about dummyism is not justified by the facts. I think the best proof of what I have just been saying is to be found in the figures of the census recently taken. What do these disclose to us ? They disclose that, with an increase of forty thousand odd in our population during the last five years, more than half the total increase has taken place in the two provincial districts of Wellington and Taranaki, the reason obviously being that there the largest area of land had been offered for sale in the Uawke's Bay district in considerable area, and in that province the inorease of population has likewise been considerable. Roughly the figures regarding the increase of population come out as follow: In Auckland, 10 per cent, additional; in Taranaki, 22 per cent.;inHawke's Bay, 18 percent.; in Wellington, 12J per cent.;in Canterbury, 6 per cent.; and in Otago, only 2£per cent. Here, then, we have the most absolute proof that the increases of our population have closely corresponded with the areas of land put upon the market, aud that settlement upon the land has been used to the utmost by the late Government to stop the exodus from our shores. Now, as to the alleged dummyism, I may say that I agree to a certain extent that the ballot system affords facilities for it. We have tried the ballot system, and we have found it has been a great encouragement to numerous applications from really the same person.

Tax on Income, Tax on Trade Professions, f L L 6 d L 8 4 350 2 10 0 0 13 0 400 5 0 0 1.5 0 500 20 0 0 2 10 0 600 15 0 0 5 0 0 700 17 10 0 7 10 0