PROPOSED PETROL TAX.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 130, 4 June 1930, Page 6

PROPOSED PETROL TAX.

I think the proposed petrol tax a common sense and fair method of raising revenue at the present time. Look at it in this light. A man builds a house, for £600 and pays, say, twelve pounds a year in rates. Another man buys a car costing this sum and gets away with about four pounds a year. The housebuilder is therefore penalised about three times more than the motorist. Compare the usefulness of the two avenues of expenditure. The house offers Xew Zealand workers about ninety-five per cent of the capital involved: in other words, about ninety-five per cent of the cost in Xcw Zealand. About forty per cent of the-value of a ear remains in the Dominion—on the average. The house- is increasing the national assets, but the car tends to dissipate them, for it represents no permanent investment or improvement. The house builder does much to relieve unemployment, he relieves overcrowding and its unhealthy consequences, he encourages home loving, and this means much towards national prosperity. The car buyer has visions of speeding somewhere; he may not know where, or why, so long as he speeds. In doing so he is expending portion of his income, which he in most cases cannot afford, in petrol, his money unfortunately also speeding overseas, while lie takes what he calls his "pleasure" and wears out the road in doing so. He neglects his garden, his home or his farm. His roof often remains unpainted so that his sedan may keep on the road, and he owes his baker to pay his second instalment on his, "pleasure" vehicle. A man is far happier in his garden, as is demonstrated by the usual expression on the motorists' faces, who look strained and anything but happy. New Zealand cannot continue to throw so* much money into vapour, and it rests with the Government to have the courage to act and not merely bewail its lot. In view of all this and the economic crisis we are passing through, .the Government should not allow money to flood uneconomic channels ruinous to the country, but should increase the taxes on all luxuries, including particularly the "pleasure" vehicle. JELB.BL. '