NEW ZEALAND AND HER NEIGHBOURS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 211, 5 September 1900, Page 2

NEW ZEALAND AND HER NEIGHBOURS.

(To the Editor.)

Sir,—ln your issue of the 30th August last, in comparing the revenues of New Zealand and Victoria you state that the revenues of the latter colony "for this year were about four and a-rialf millions, an increase of only £G6,775 on the preceding twelve months!" Now, sir, the latest official figures obtainable .for the financial year ending '98;: stand for • the Victorian revenue at very close on seven millions, the exact figures being£6,630,217, or £5 12/11 per head of the population, and as the Victorian revenue has gone on increasing during the past1 two years, if your figures are correct some serious calamity must have overtaken the reven? ues of that colony, which, notwithstanding that my parents live there, I have not yet heard. Now, sir, I am heartily glad that New Zealand has the magnificent surplus this year of £441,390, and I hope that ey.ery penny of that sum will be placed .to credit against the ■'former, deficiencies of ; revenue, which, amount to £1,982,000, nearly two millions in round numbers, and which is now eating its head off at £3 17/10 per cent, interest. Then, looking at your public debt, which totals at the end,of '98 the respectable sum of £45,000,000, half of which is spent absolutely ~unproductively (I am taking the figures from your own Year Book of New Zealand for the year ending ,98, page 400), from these it appears 'to me that every man, woman and child is paying at the rate, of about £1 5/ per head per annum on an unproductive public debt, or just about the excess per head of direct and indirect taxation which the people of New Zealand have ,to pay more than their cousins in Victoria. The actual figures are: New Zealand, direct and indirect taxation,, £3 11/6; Victoria, £2 4/3 per head per annum; balance in favour of Victoriaj £1 7/3 less per head per annum. I may state that 44 millions out of the Victorian debt of 4G millions were spent at the end of ■•'96 in reproductive :public works. (Vide Blue Book o.n Federation presented to Victorian Parliament, 1597.)— I am, etc.,. A VICTORIAN. [In the article in question the figures as to revenue should have read 7 h Instead of 4a milllonß.-Ed. E.S.]