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Press, Volume LIX, Issue 17728, 3 April 1923, Page 6

* A recent decision of the High Court in Melbourne has provided a first-class sensation in the Federal Taxation Department. The practice hitherto ha* been to assess' live stock for taxation purposes on ''fair average values" fixed by the authorities each year. Last year, for example, this was the schedule:

There were also different rates for different, parts of Western Australia, and a separate schedule for the Northern Territory. But the Court now declares that to be unconstitutional. Discrimination between States is expressly forbidden, and since the whole system of taxation has been based on a principle of wide discrimination for several years, it is difficult to say where the judgment will lead to. If it is retrospective, assessments will have to be reviewed over all the years which have followed the introduction of Federal iicome-tax, the amount of money involved being beyond present computation. If an amendment of the law is found necessary, great confusion and delay will occur, since Parliament is now in recess, and will not bo called together till June. Hurried meetings are being convened everywhere to consider what lias happened.

The formation in Wellington last week of a, Native Bird Protection Society can bring no harm —and should bring a great deal of good. As long a? the Society refrains from extreme measures its activities must help the Dominion economically and enrich it sentimentally. Strangely enough, however, the founders said very little about birds as songsters or biological survivals, and said a good deal about the necessity of preserving native birds in order to preserve native trees. Few in the Dominion can have Tealised before that "the very life of our forests U threatened by the destruction of native birds" i that to kill tuis and bell-birds and! pigeons and "mockies" is to pass sentence of death on kowhai and broadleaf and totara and rimu. Yet it does not ( matter what we thought if what we are told now is the fact. Tho economy of Heaven is strange. If one wants tba birds not killed because they themselves are killers, and anothe© that he may bear the gullies still echoing with song, the only people who need be anxious are the gunsmith and the manufacturer of ammunition. When tho "Beachcomber," now famous, of Dunk Island, introduced hees and patent hives, a bird like a. kingfisher came along and picked off the bees as they left tho box. But he refrained from buying a. gun. So we, if to want a chance in that battle to the death of which D(r. Tillyardl told us tho other day—insects against mem — had better hang up our guns and save our lives with those of our lordly forest trees.

i The recent trouble at Thursday Is- ! land, now "happily" settled, was "so delicate," when the "Daily Telegraph" first announced it, "that frank discussion was difficult." But' examination of the latest issues of the "Telegraph" to reach New Zealand indicates that the difficulties of frank discus-sion were somehow surmounted. The Japanese took possession of the town —there were only five white policemen to prevent them and twenty-five soldiers without authority to act—and the "Telegraph" wants to know if there - isi to be a repetition of this delicate situation should a dispute arise a second time. It is made quite clear J, however, that the trouble was neither racial nor political, and that "by comparison with some of our own strikes, the Japanese behaved with commendable restraint." The strikers simply formed' a procession,. marched through the town, and made the condition of their dispersal a guarantee that the whole of their demands would bo temporarily conceded: which was precisely whsit strikers of any nationality would have done where the employers were powerless and the Government busied with other affairs two thousand miles away. The real danger would seem to be that th© island is a part of Queensland instead of a responsibility of the Commonwealth. The federal Constitution lays it down that there can be no. intervention by the. central authority until the State Government has issued a proclamation declaring that a condition of domestic strife exists: which moans, really, that there can bo no prompt action at all. Queensland will either have to maintain a big police force on the island or cede it to the Commonwealth.

Sheep. Cattle. Horses. Pigs. s. d. £ 9. £ £ s. Victoria 12 6 G 0 15 2 10 N.S.W. 10 0 6 0 S 1 0 Qld. . <> 0 3 0 4 0 15 fe.A. 10 0 5 0 7 2 0 Tas. 10 0 3 0 lo 0 15 W.A. 12 0 4 10 — —