The Dominion SATURDAY, JULY 26, 1930. PLUNDERING THE MOTORISTS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 257, 26 July 1930, Page 10

The Dominion SATURDAY, JULY 26, 1930. PLUNDERING THE MOTORISTS

Of many inequities in Mr. Forbes’s first Budget, the most unconscionable is the raid made on the Main Highways Revenue Account. Motorists are required through the petrol tax to relieve the Consolidated Fund of obligations of some years’ standing and to assume new ones which the Government is forcing upon them. In addition, interest is to be charged on loans which were originally made free of interest. Financial necessity may justify many shifts but it cannot excuse the repudiation of obligations, or what really amounts to a breach of the Government’s contract with the motorists. That would be actionable in private transactions but it is what the Government proposes to do.. ’ Set out in detail, the items of this unblushing raid (“steal” would be a stronger word) on the Highways Fund are as follow. • Annual grant discontinued ... coon non Annual free loan discontinued rai onr Interest on past free loans jtoi.ow Subsidy on local rates x22u,uw Total ....•’•> £516,300 It will be noted that what the Government withholds from the Fund and what it requires the Fund to give ■ make up a total greater by £66,000 than the estimated yield in eight months (£450,000) from the extra threepence on petrol. Moreover, the. Government not only divests itself of obligations amounting t0‘£235,000 but places new charges on the motorists amounting to £281,300. A similar but not quite so heavy a raid was attempted by the Government last year. The same items were included except that which makes the Highways Fund responsible for subsidies on local rates, subsidies that for half a century have been paid out of the Consolidated Fund. The inequity of even those milder proposals caused such a ’ storm of protest that the late Sir Joseph Ward finally withdrew all of them. To-day motorists are once again called to fight for the mtegrity of their own road funds. If the present raid succeeds, it will mean that motorists will receive no benefit from the 75 per cent, tax increase on petrol which will go into the bottomless maw of the Consolidated Fund. . . . .L • Motorists have had a melancholy suspicion that the increased petrol tax was designed not only to screw more money out of them but to help bolster up the railways. And so it proves to be. Mr - Forbes in his Budget naively confesses that “meeting that additional ■ amount of reading costs out of the petrol tax would also assist in the direction of putting road competition on a more equitable basis. bo, apart from political dishonesty, the motorists tax is not merely a revenue tax but punitive as well. The Crown proposes to use its sovereign powers to damage its competitors. ... . Still another injustice is that the cities, which contribute a large proportion to the Highways Fund, will get nothing from the new tax for their roads and have received nothing in the past. So far as the country as a whole is concerned, not a penny of the additional revenue, amounting to £675,000 annually, will go on to main highways. Some of it will be spent, on subsidiary roads but this part, along with the rest of the new tax proceeds, will go to relieve the Government of obligations it has discharged in the past. The whole transaction reflects most discreditably on the Government. It is a bare-faced political swindle and it is for the motorists to see that the Government does not get away with it. 1 .