LOWERING RATES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 98, 27 April 1932, Page 11

LOWERING RATES

SOUTHLAND POWER BOARD

(By Telegraph.—^Press ; Association.)

INVEBCABGILL, 26th April,

A reduction of over £15,000 in the amount levied in. rates was decided on by the Southland Electric Power Board at a special-, meeting-to-day.- The proposals must first, have the sanction of the Local Body Loans Board, and.the. meeting passed : the necessary resolutions to place'before that body. '

The meeting also.discussed the basis of rating, sin consideration of the fact that the Southland, Wallace,, and Tuapeka counties had been revalued and had had their valuations reduced, whereas the City of Tnvercargill and smaller boroughs had not been so dealt with.' ' ' ■'. ' ' . ,'

It was decided by six votes to fiye-io obtain parity of rating as between the revalued and non-revalued areas by imposing a separate rate of 3-16ths of a penny on the revalued areas.

in the Federal ■• Constitution of. Australia passed in 1900, and probably in many other Imperial grants of, constitutional rights.. I have referred to it as the charter and safeguard of justice. It is as necessary to-day in New Zealand as it was in the year 1700 in England, to establish complete confidence of the public that the Supreme Bench is impartial, free from any influence, and certain to. give judgment in accordance with right. Such confidence can only be maintained and ensured by establishing the dignity and independence of the Bench. .-..

" It has been suggested that the Judges may,' without prejudicially, affecting principle, voluntarily refund part of their salaries, if influenced only by a natural desire to share in reduction imposed upon others in the service of the :down. Tho Judges are not in the service of the Crown, though desig-' nated His Majesty's Judges, for they are not merely free from any direction of the Crown, but bound by their oat' : to.deny the right of the Crown to direct them. They arc, moreover, the guardians for their successors of the principle established by the Act of Settlement. If the Judges, moved by any personal sentiments or influenced by public clamour demanding equality of sacrifice, voluntarily make any surrender of their salaries, they make it difficult, if not impossible, for their successors in office in similar circumstances to' refrain from following the precedent so initiated,

"I trust that those who now hold the pass which separates judicial office from all other avocations, those who have accepted the place which makes them the keepers of the pass, may not be induced in this crisis to surrender it.-»»