MUST HAVE MORE REVENUE

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 19, 18 October 1926, Page 12

MUST HAVE MORE REVENUE

QUEENSLAND TREASURER’S DECLARATION DIFFICULT, AWKWARD POSITION LOSSES ON STATE VENTURES By Telegraph.—Press association, copyright. Brisbane, October 16. In the Assembly, speaking on the proposal to increase stamp duties, the Premier (Mr. McCormack) said that he found himself in. a very difficult and awkward position. As Treasurer he must obtain more revenue from somewhere, and to do that he proposed to increase the stamp duties and bring new instruments within the ambit of those duties. Necessity compelled him to impose new taxation in every direction possible. He had asked the Departments to curtail their expenditure, and he had adopted a policy’ which would not continue to lose the taxpayers’ money upon ventures which were unprofitable. If the people whom they set out to serve would not give the social service that was necessary to make a success of those ventures, then there was no policy left but for the Government to abandon those particular things, until the people were _ willing to give. the social service which was so essential to all. The blame could not be put on the men who worked those industries, he continued. The direction had been bad. The people who had been charged with carrying on these concerns had not done their dutv to the State. The position hade been brought about largely as a result of difficulty with the railways, which had been caused by circumstances over which the Government had no control. As far as the railways were concerned, inefficiency and lack of discipline existed, and the Government was going to see that it got efficiency and discipline. It seemed to him that every Government was faced with the problem of making good from general taxation losses on the great transport service which the State controlled..