PAYMENT OF RATES

Press, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24741, 5 December 1945, Page 6

PAYMENT OF RATES

VALUER-GENERAL’S NEW POWERS MANGONUI COUNTY POSITION DISCUSSED (P-A.) WELLINGTON, Dec. 4. Exception to the clause in the Statutes Amendment Bill which gives the Valuer-General new power to enforce payment of rates was taken ky S. W. Smith (Opposition, Bay . when the bill was before the House of Representatives this evening. Mr Smith said that that particular clause in the bill was brought in to censure and discipline the Mangonui County Council, which over a long number of years had made efforts on constitutional lines to obtain adjustment of an injustice. The fact that the Valuer-General was being given power to enforce payment of rates was a vicious piece of legislation, said Mr Smith. It was a negation of the fundamental rules of democracy, particularly that rule which gave the individual the right to have access to the Courts of the country. The Valuer-General would have power to order any money to be paid direct to the Government —power that was a mockery of democracy—instead of getting an attachment order through the usual Court process. Mr T. C. Webb (Opposition, Kaipara) said he had no objection to the Valuer-General being given power to do what a county council ought to do. He was not upholding any county in refusing to strike rates. There was no ground for unconstitutional action: councils which objected to the law as it stood could take constitutional steps, but should administer the law as it stood or get out. However, the power given to sequester debts owing to ratepayers was a rank injustice, and could lead to much hardship. Mr M. H. Oram (Opposition, Manawatu) described the clause as dangerous and pernicious. It was aimed at the dairy farmer, seeking to authorise the Valuer-General to get down on a farmer’s milk cheque if the rates were unpaid. It gave greater power to the Valuer-General than was possessed by local bodies under the existing law. The Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. P. Fraser) said it was recognised that hospital rating presented a problem in some areas, but when the principal act whs brought down it was never contemplated that there would be aconcerted attempt by a local body to defy the law, as was the case with the Mangonui County. If the ordinary processes of law were used to collect rates under such exceptional conditions the procedure would become unworkable. It would be putting a premium on an attempt to sabotage the law. If one ratepayer refused to pay his rates it was right that the law should be invoked to recover that sum, but if 20,000 or 30,600 ratepayers elected to default, some means other than Court procedure was necessary to enable the money to be collected for essential purposes. Mr Fraser said the Mangonui County Council was, as far as he knew, the only local body to which the procedure authorised in the clause would be applied, and it was solely to meet? the exceptional conditions which had arisen at Mangonui that the clause was introduced.

The clause was retained on the voices.