Petrol, and the arts

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32554, 13 March 1971, Page 21

Petrol, and the arts

(N.Z. Press Association) WHANGAREI, March 12. The Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council feels that it should have a share of the recentlyimposed petrol tax, its chairman (Mr W. N. Sheat) said in Whangarei this week. ‘‘Those who regard thej roads of this country as the most important thing in our lives proclaim that the petrol tax should be used for reading and nothing else. I do not suggest we go back to clay

roads and bullock waggons, but I do suggest that a proper sense of relative values is needed.

“The quality of our life is not measured solely by the number of square feet of bitumen per head of population.”

A community had a right to decide how it reallocated its resources through taxation, he said. “There is no great logic in spending petrol tax on roads; inext we shall have the beer drinkers advocating that the duty on liquor be spent on public toilets, and someone saying that a sales tax be imposed on contraceptives to finance maternity hospitals.” He felt that the possibilities were alarming and thought even more alarming the suggestion that the National Roads Board might penalise local bodies that have the imagination to spend their share of the tax on something other than reading. “I sincerely hope that pressure of this kind will not be brought against these enlightened local bodies,” said Mr Sheat.

He was speaking at a premiere of a travelling sculp-

ture exhibition, in the Northland Society of Arts’ gallery. The exhibition has been arranged by the New Zealand Society of Sculptors and Painters and is sponsored by the arts council. Sixteen New Zealand sculptors have works displayed, most in the modem idiom.