Social Credit Candidate Speaks At Cust

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30287, 13 November 1963, Page 13

Social Credit Candidate Speaks At Cust

Any government in the position of the present National Government could have brought down the rates of taxation, said Mr F. J. Clark, the Social Credit candidate for the Rangiora electorate, on Monday evening. The increase in production allowed the Government to do it, he said. Mr Clark was speaking at the Cust hall to an audience of a police constable, a reporter and two members of the public.

During the meeting, which lasted more than two hours and a half, Mr Clark read extensively from newspaper clippings and his party’s official policy. Taxation -was the biggest bugbear of a nation today. A proportion of taxes collected went to servicing the national debt, which at the moment was nearly £lOOO million, he said. That was only the national debt. There was also the local body debt and the hire-pur-chase debt. All these went to making up the true national debt. Mr Clark read from a report of the local Authorities’ Loans Board which said debt servicing took up a large proportion of the rates collected by many local authorities. Mr Clark said that onequarter of the income of the Lyttelton Harbour Board was used in this way. At present New Zealanders worked about four months of the year for the Government and to help pay the interest on the national debt. Mr Clark said that during the last three years the price of many commodities and services had gone up. These included electric power, postage, and railway fares. It was no wonder Mr Holyoake could lower rates of taxation when he increased the cost of other things. His Government got an extra £23 million from these other things. This money did not now have to be found from taxation, he said.

The major political parties claimed the Social Credit had not been tried, but it had in two Canadian states, said Mr Clark. In Alberta it went into power in 1936 when the state debt was £167 million. After 12 years the debt had been reduced to £l2B million and by 1952 another £3l million had been paid back. Today in that State the Government had enough money to pay back the remainder of the debt, but could not because the investors would not accept it. Since 1951 when a Social Credit Government was elected in British Colombia the State debt has been wiped off the books. These were the only two States in Canada which had made any attempt to reduce their debts. In 1961 the New Zealand national income was £13,005 million, said Mr Clark. In 1962 it was £13,045 million—an increase of £4O million. During the same period £1.5 million of currency was taken out of circulation. This did not add up. Mr Clark said the rate of increase of bankruptcy was going up and yet Mr Holyoake had said things had never been better.- At the last two elections both major parties had said they would reduce death duties, said Mr Clark. In 1960 £lO million was collected from this source and this increased to £l5 million in 1962.

“They did not seem to be going down,” said Mr Clark. To a question he replied that a Social Credit government would pay back the national debt with produce. When opening the meeting the chairmain Mr J. Marshall, said Mr Clark could not get leave from his work to contest the election so would not be able to make many personal calls on voters.