WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 139, 13 June 1936, Page 17

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?

Now that the first session of Parliament is almost concluded, we may well ask, "What have they done?" Election pledges were given for the repeal of the sales tax and at least a reduction in the high-pegged exchange. Nothing has been done. The flat tax of 5/ per quarter on rich, and poor alike, together with the emergency income tax, which takes 8d in the pound from the great mass of small business people, who have difficulty to make both ends meet, is about the worst of all the blunders made by the late Government. But the Laboiir party has done nothing about it. So much for the sins of omission. The sins of commission include the bread price fixation. The poor could buy cheap bread, but under this Government stale bread is being burned and small shopkeepers are compelled to sell at a. reduced profit, reducing their scanty earnings. The Government is labouring under the delusion that the wage earners are the only ones who are suffering under an unjust system, while the truth is that many small employers are not making as much as the men who are working for them. FORTY YEARS A WORKER.