TAXATION PAYMENTS

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12822, 17 August 1939, Page 5

TAXATION PAYMENTS

Sir, —My heart aches for you. First of all a Rotorua printer bags some Tauranga public body printing, and now on top of that A. R. Lovell has discovered and, what is worse, made public to the world, the hitherto unrealised facts that you are unfair, biassed, untruthful undutiful, and are also a paid propagandist obeying the dictates of vested interests and finance capital. Moreover, he has published this awful indictment, by your courtesy, through the correspondence columns of your dear little paper. I know what ■ “vested interests” means, but fail to understand finance capital.” I suppose it is a new bogey, like “encirclement” and “the Montague Normans.” Of course the biggest vested interests in New Zealand are the Trades Unions and Federation of Labour, and the most powerful in New Zealand. And if you want to read a paper that has all the horrors with which you are charged, read a publication emanating from Wellington and entitled “The Standard.”

Now, to make a short analysis of Mr Lovell’s charges against you. Your statement was, shortly, that “a man on £ 5 a week will pay taxes of £ 20 a year, at which he will not be pleased.” This of course is absolutely and undeniably true, except, of course, as Mr Lovell points out, it is only presumption on your part to imagine that the man will not be pleased at having to pay it. However, I think your presumption is warranted in the case of most normal people.

So the position is that all these are hurled at you and your statement is classed as a half truth because you did* not qualify your absolutely accurate statement by a column or so of observations pointing out the exemptions of a married man with a famjly, etc., etc. One would not relish the job of writing, or even reading, newspapers, if so ridiculous, a policy was necessary to avoid being branded as an unscrupulous liar.

Apparently also you were guilty of “conveniently omitting” from your simple statement of the tax on a man earning £5 a* week, a copy of the Government’s pre-elec-tion promises re the alleged “Social Security.” What a ridiculous basis on which to found a charge of unscrupulous concealment! As a matter of fact you would have been guilty of misrepresentation had you done so, for the said pre-election promises are not all in force, and are subject to all kinds of traps and evasions that render them not a fraction of being as universal or beneficial as they sound. Also you were apparently guilty of belying the spirit of honest journalism by not annexing to your simple sentence a statement that the tax mentioned, included payment towards the money borrowed from thrifty people of our own race to pay for our railways, electric light, roads, farms, food, etc., by. means of which we have attained our present status. One would have thought all New Zealanders would have understood this. But apparently you should have annexed more than this. You should, to be really an honest journalist, have descended to untrue and quite un-British misrepresentation, by describing our forbears and benefactors as “Shylocks,” or, if you want —which is doubtful —Mr Lovell’s real approbation “financial gangsters.” No, Sir, you- need not shake in your-shoes, you were quite right to publish Mr Lovell’s statements. The more publicity that is given to this type of muddled thinking the sooner we will get the reins of government into the hands of sound and responsible rulers to drag our country out of the morass. His technique is similar to that of Mussolini, Hitler and Japan, the technique of attack and rudeness, and while it may appeal to a small percentage of rabid people it merely disgusts or amuses the average New Zealander —and thank goodness such are still in the vast majority. “TIN LUX.” yi ■