FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

Auckland Star, Volume LIX, Issue 254, 26 October 1928, Page 9

FLOTSAM AND JETSAM.

ON THE COATES "WAVE."

MR. J. A. LEE IN GOOD FORM

Speaking to an overcrowded meeting in St. Andrew's Hall last evening. Mr. J. A. Lee said the Coates "wave" had washed much queer political floatsam and jetsam into Parliament. Elderly men of Victorian sentiment had been washed out of armchairs into the House, where they had busied themselves in trying to turn the political clock back to their own periods. But, at the moment, there were probably quaking hearts in Reform homes, and many the wife of an elderly statesman would be warming the M.P.'s slippers and making the armchair ready again. At the hearth these gentlemen were a decoration, and cast an atmosphere of bliss over the domestic scene, where they could air their views to the click of knitting needles. In Parliament they were an anachronism. It was yesterday trying to govern to-day. Parliament wanted men with eyes to the future.

Mr. Lee said he objected to a taxation system which permitted the anomalies that at present exist in company taxation. At present a £50 income would pay the* maximum of 4/6 in the pound if derived from a larger company, whereas a man with £10,000 derived from 10 companies each with a maximum income of £2000 would only pay the £2000 rate of tax. Company taxation was unfair, crippled industrial expansion and should be replaced by a tax on the individual income. To tax income at its source was wrong. It should be taxed at the point at which it is received by the individual. Mr. Lee was accorded a vote of thanks and confidence.