"NO EXTRA TAXATION."

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 249, 20 October 1928, Page 12

"NO EXTRA TAXATION."

£70,000,000 LOAN PROPOSAL

U& JOSEPH WARD EMPHATIC

REJOINDER TO PRIME MINISTER.

A rejoinder to the Prime Minister's criticism of Sir Joseph Ward's borrowing proposals waa made by Sir Joseph on his return from Auckland to Wellington.

Sir Joseph said that he had read thej outline of the Prime Minister's speech under the heading "Borrow, Boom and Bunt." He was sorry that he could not compliment Mr. Coates upon his accuracy or knowledge of matters upon which he professed to be speaking with' any authority. - "Mr. Coates' statement that I have 1 declared that I was going to borrow £70,000,000 in one year is absolutely without any foundation in fact. I have made no such statement at any time that I proposed a policy of borrowing £70,000,000 in one year. What I did say was that this country required, and I was favourable to obtaining, up to £70,000,000, £10,000,000 of which would be for the completion of authorised long railways, and £80,000,000 for the purpose of lending to settlers and workers at the rate of £6,000,000 to £8,000,000 per annum, to be loaned at 4} per cent and to provide for a 1 per cent sinking fund. This is about the same amount that we are lending to settlers and workers now; and for any man in the position of the I Prime Minister to ignore this fact, and to charge me with saying that I was going to borrow £70,000,000 in one year, is to put himself in the position of being an absolutely unreliable and misleading professed leader of public opinion.

Mr. Coates* "Wild Imagination." i "There is no question, in my opinion, that the needs of settlers in this country (and the provision for workers' homes as well) requires a sum equal to what I have named; and without something of this nature being done there is financial stricture and trouble staring this country straight in the face. "To talk of a policy of "borrow, boom and bunt,' when the whole of my financial proposal is to apply the money for the early completion of a number of stagnant railways, which are returning nothing in the shape of interest on their cost, and which would be immediately converted into interest-earning lines, is a stretch of wild imagination that one can scarcely conceive of a man in Mr. Gates' position being guilty of. The application of these words to the loans on lands of farmers in this country is even worse. Over £40,000,000 has already been advanced on farmers' land securities in New Zealand with comparatively speaking no loss whatever upon them, and to-day there are farmers from end to end of New Zealand who do not know how to make ends meet for want of the necessary capital to enable them to finance. There is a greater demand for money to-day for them there has ever been in the history of the Dominion; and under the proposals I am making, which are entirely different in their conception to the method of obtaining money for public works, their whole position and difficulties can be met, and met with safety to-the country.

■ How Money Caaßeßaiaed. ."I have a letter in" my possession to-day from a gentleman in this country of which the following is an exact extract: Trom 1894 to 1900 I was in the London office of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and it may interest you to | know their method of selling debenture stock in London through a agent there, and in such a way that the Stock Exchange was not overloaded with it, and consequently the market price did 1 not ialL Thar board in Montreal would' authorise the issue, and then cable to J their London agent to place it through a ring of big stock brokers, and they unloaded it to their own clients, charging only the usual brokerage fee for so doing, and at a later date a quotation for the new stock was applied for in accordance with Stock Exchange rules.' "I am not proposing," said Sir Joseph, "that any of the money should be taken off the New Zealand market for the two purposes I have named—advancing to settlers and to workers and for the comparatively quick completion of our railway lines. The whole of the money would come from outside New Zealand. In neither case would there be one shilling of taxation required; and the whole of the money required can be obtained, and would be of immense value I to practically every class of the community. To Decrease Unemployment "The Prime Minister's suggestion that I am in favour of an immigration policy is not worth discussing. I have been strongly opposed to the policy pursued by him and his colleagues of importing people into New Zealand in large numbers during the winter mmtin. "1 am of the opinion that * vigorous policy of smaller land settlement should! be pursued, with the linking up and completing of railways that are now earning nothing, and the provision being made of money for settlers and workers' homes, and that this would in the ordinary course of things prevent congested unemployment and help to diffuse the people from the main centres, and so decrease unemployment and add io the natural increase of people in the Dominion, and with such a policy carried out on practical and vigorous lines, in the ordinary course of events during the next eight or ten years, there must be a very consider- j able accession to the population of the Dominion. ■ "All la Not WelL" "The observations of the Prime Minister directing attention to my remarks in Parliament have no application whatever to what I am urging now. The borrowing referred to by him in Parliament in every instance meant increased taxation; and! the diminishing balance in the consoli-l dated revenue, now down to £173,000,1 would make any man of ordinary experience anxious, if not alarmed, at the trend of the public finance of the Dominion.! My proposals are in an entirely different I direction, and are for two specific pur-1 poses which will help the earning power of the community enormously without increasing the burden of oac fraction, and will give heart and hope to thousands of people in different portions of the Dominion who to-day know that all is not well."