BUDGET COMPARISONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXII, Issue 32, 6 August 1936, Page 8

BUDGET COMPARISONS

Budget benevolences' in New Zealand, and in Victoria, challenge comparison. Although the Victorian Country Party, with a minority following in the Victorian Legislative Assembly, formed a Cabinet by permission of the .Victorian Labour Party, and apparently still exists only through Labour's support or neutrality, nevertheless taxes come down in the Victorian Budget while they go up under the New Zealand Labour Budget. "Concessions to taxpayers in Victoria .total £280,000," and though £110,000 of this is carried by deficit, still a deficit does nol mean quite the same tiling there as it would here, because Australia under the Premiers' Plan evolved that subtle conception called die "permissible deficit." This phrase— which political economy should never have accepted, but which may prove valuable to ironic philosophy —now lends to disappear, • but the practice of leaning on the 'Commonwealth Budget surpluses by State Governmehls budgeting for deficits continues •to be a reality. So taxreduction per medium of Budget-der ficit has in Australia a complexion of its own, as there is so much leaning on Federal finances.

What is even more remarkable than the Victorian decrease in taxation, contrasting with the New Zealand increase, is the fact that the higher grades of land taxation fall in Victoria, while they rise in New Zealand's Labour Budget. Remember that the Victorian Government is of the Country Party; its farmer-help policy does not consist of guaranteeing prices for smaller farmers (as dairy farmers) but of abolishing "the super land lax of 5 per cent.," which apparently will be mainly a relief to larger farm-holdings. But our 100 per cent. Labour Government in New Zealand brings in a graduated land tax, stiff iv the higher grades, "to obtain for the community the values created by it," and to divert farming from big acreage to intensive utilisation. This contrast is all the more interesting when it is remembered that in New Zealand arid in Australia political interests divide into three main groups: (1) Labour, (2) Country, and (3)' the Rest. Country (propped by Labour) yields in Victoria general tax concessions (including reduction in . unemployment relief lax) and abolition of super tax on land; Labour, (depending on Country votes) yields in New Zealand higher income tax, higher graduated land tax, and a sectional .experiment in guaranteed prices. In Victoria farmers bargain through a Country Party; in New Zealand they bargain through votes. Is it not time they asked themselves whither they are going?