HA'PENNY NEWSPAPER TAX

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 54, 5 March 1927, Page 9

HA'PENNY NEWSPAPER TAX

(From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, 24th February. A new name has been coined in Sydney for the halfpenny. It is the "Lang." It is a sly i"ittlo tilt at the 1 vernier (Mr. Lang) for his imposition of the ha'penny newspaper tax. Among a strange assortment of relics and anuicnt coins in a curio dealer's window iv one of Sydney's principal streets is a lonely little ha'penny, which, if it is generally despised, and used mainly in drapers' 19s 11 Jd advertisements, to make a pound appear less, is welcomed by the Government. Tagged to the ha'penny in the curio dealer's shop are these words: "New Australian Coinage: This is one Lang; Two.Langs equal one penny; Used for newspaper taxation purposes, 1926." Just as the penny is known as a "blown," so this little coin of humbler denomination is now likely to be known in Sydney as the "Lang." The Government, by the way, is not quite certain even yet whether this newspaper tax will fast until it goes out of office, when it will probably be repealed, ' for the High Court may yet declare it unconstitutional. But Mr. Lang is undismayed by any such prospect, for, if the tax is declared illegal, he has another taxup his sleeve —a tax on newspaper advertisements. It is perhaps a case of tit for tat, for the Sydney Press as a whole is not altogether kindly disposed to Mr. Lang and his Government