INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30451, 27 May 1964, Page 9

INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM

“Loss” Noted In N.Z. “The Press" Special Service WELLINGTON, May 26. Nature intended men to be Individuals, but today there was a loss of individuality, said Mr J. A. D. Anderson, of Christchurch, in a paper to the Constitutional Society’s convention. Cartels, monopolies, tariff groups, incorporated societies, local bodies, closed professions, unions, and political parties threatened the individual, he said. Local bodies took everincreasing rates, Mr Anderson said. In answer he proposed the introduction of interest-free loans with a servicing charge of 1 per cent, similar to the loan raised by the Dairy Board, and a controlled citizens tax. "Furthermore, every parking meter in the country should be thrown into the sea,” Mr Anderson said. “Of all the rods which man has ever made for his own back the parking meter must be one of the most stupid and inconvenient means of raising money, and its stultifying effect upon business is enormous.” Doctors, for insisting on a general practitioner seeing a patient before he went to a specialist, insurance companies, banks, and the stock exchange were all criticised by Mr Anderson before he moved to the State departments, sorting out the Inland Revenue Department as “the real brigands.” Everything was made unnecessarily complicated, Mr Anderson said. Unless one was content to accept things, with attendant exploitation and injustice. one was destined to be fully occupied fighting for no more than a reasonably square deal—“a thing we cannot unreasonably expect to be a natural component of our highly-developed civilisation of which we are so smugly proud,” he said.