No handouts, but tax overhaul

Press, 4 August 1977, Page 3

No handouts, but tax overhaul

’A Auckland No handouts but an overhaul of the tax structure — this is how Labour plans to fight the 1978 General Election. The Leader of the Opposition (Mr Rowling) has told Auckland trade unionists that his party is pledged to give top priority to coming to grips with taxation. “The tax structure will be changed so that the impost on the working people will be relieved,” he said. “The Labour Party will not go into the election with handouts,” he said. “The conditions don’t exist for them, and the state of the economy won’t allow it. “To get out of the mire we have to use our hands and heads. The people on the workbench doing overtime and shift work have

got to be compensated by others making like sacrifice. “We have done tremendous work on the tax structure,” said Mr Rowling. “Before we go to the polls, we will know what the real alternatives are.” Mr Rowling again suggested that the Prime Minister (Mr Muldoon) was thinking of a snap election. In allowing a return to free wage-bargaining, there was the underlying threat from Mr Muldoon that unless it went “his way” a section of the Labour movement would be made the scapegoat “for an election he had no chance of winning on economic grounds.” Mr Rowling pledged that industrial law would be returned “at least to the situation when we introduced our Industrial Relations Act in 1973.”