HUTT ROAD TAX

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 10, 6 October 1927, Page 12

HUTT ROAD TAX

Sir,—"Spotlight" is "hedging." He says that my letter, published on Monday, indicates that 1 think the local bodies pay the interest on the Hutt Road bitumen, and says that I am mistaken. My letter said no such thing, except to those who want it to do so. The Hutt Road bitumen, in this controversy, is merely another term for the local highway board’s programme, to which the local bodies are contributors. The statement that the local bodies are owed no thanks is puerile. It may, or may not be true—that is a matter of opinion—but what of it? Are we to cut off our noses to spite our faces? This is what we are being asked to do. I must thank you, Sir, for publishing two letters alter mine, both from opponents of the levy. They are very illuminating. This controversy originated in > the fact that a section of the Wellington Automobile Association considered that the motorist is already contributing too much to roads. Figures were given to show that his taxation amounted to from £l5 upwards a year. That he should not be called upon to pay more was the whole burden of the cry; a principle was at stake, and there was talk of fighting to tho last ditch. And nqw, what have wo got? "Spotlight,” with tho unqualified support of at least two motorists, threatens an increase in petrol and tire duties to provide not a local, but a whole national scheme of road building. Here is a champion indeed! What has the Weilingtou Automobile Association to say to this?

Four definite points arise: 1. Have we a guarantee that the Government this session is bringing down legislation to- increase taxation on motorists (petrol and tires) and give us a national loading programme? 2. Have we a guarantee that this programme will include completion of our local highways programmer 8. Have tie a guarantee that such taxation will be spent always and only on the roads? ' ' 4. Have we a guarantee that under the national highways programme we will get the roads we want? Sir, it is the purest moonshine. Auckland is building her roads in concrete. She is prepared to pay the price, but are we on that account to court the prospect of being taxed to the huge extent necessary to continue that programme, ami possibly provide similar ones elsewhere ? Wellington is building in bitumen; will other parts of the Dominion consent to the impost—an impost on motorists, mark you—necessary to complete our aclicmes, and finance similar ones elsewhere? What sort of nonsense is all this? If is a bad case, indeed, that of our opponents, when they have been forced to such an impasse. For many a year to come we will only get the roads we want under a local programme and local loans, and it is oovious that the motorist must in future depend more and more upon himself. It is he that wants the roads, and it is plain that he must pay for them—other people won't; they say so "flat. And how willing the motorist is to pay, or rather how clearly he sees that he must pay, is revealed iu the new ground taken up by the opponents of the extra 10s. To avoid the levy they are prepared to pay pounds, and pounds, and. pounds, it is a strange monster this, surely, that naw blundered into the midst of the Automobile Association! Permit me, Sir, to conclude this letter with a quotation from the telegraphed report of a speech by the Prime iuinister at Tuakau on Tuesday. It; will interest the disciples of * Spotlight in liis recent rash reference to reading in the “States?" "Mr. Coates made a general comparison between New Zealand s roading svstein and that of the United States. ‘Only two States, Indiana and Ohio, had a greater surfaced .mileage than New Zealand. The Dominion bad more surfaced road than the State ot New York with its ten million inhabitants. California, with an area halt as great again as New Zealand, and with a population two and a half times that of the Dominion, and with nine times as manv motor-cars, had onlv 18.000 miles of surfaced roads, compared with 48,000 miles in Now Zealand. In other words, there was fifteen times greater length of surfaced roads to each motorist in New- Zealand than in Cahtoris quite right when he says the Americans build their roads out of petrol taxes. If is the motorist who pays. In New Zealand we have been much more fortunate. —I Wellington, September 29.