HOSPITAL RATING

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 135, 10 June 1942, Page 6

HOSPITAL RATING

"REAL ISSUE AVOIDED"

DOUBLE OR TREBLE TAXES

The Wellington Ratepayers' Association, in a statement today, says it is not satisfied with the Government's response to the reasonable and right demands of the deputation from the City Council. "The Prime Minister avoided the real issue as far as it affects not only the ratepayers of Wellington. but all house owners and property owners through the Dominion. The Mayor showed that the hospital charges since Social Security was introduced had increased by nearly double, and other speakers demonstrated that the increased burden had not been equitably distributed. The Prime Minister made a point that the issues at stake affect equally each and every one of us. We agree. All the people of age pay to the Social Security Fund, many pay to the' Consolidated Fund from which the Government draws to supplement the Social Security Fund and then the ratepayers -of Wellington, as Councillor Sievwright pointed out, will have to pay £135,000 this yaar towards the same services that they paid to when contributing their quota to the Social .Security Fund and the Consolidated Fund as well. Surely the Prime Minister must contradict himself when he says the Government has met the issues at stake by casting the burden of increased taxation 'equally upon each and every one of us.' Ratepayers everywhere throughout the Dominion must continue to protest against this iniquity ous double, even treble, burden. "Everyone knows that it was made clear at the time when the Social Security tax was being imposed that it was to provide for all hospital and charitable aid services, even to allmedical practitioners' services, attention and free drugs. And that fund has so grown that there has always been sufficient funds available to the credit, of the Social Security Fund to pay for all hospital and charitable aid purposes and that by the stroke of a pen the Prime Minister could abolish this double and treble tax and not imperil in the .slightest degree our Social Security services. Notwithstanding what the Prime Minister says, namely, that there was never any. intention,. tha_t it , was never suggested, | that the Social Security Fund, supple- | mented by the contribution from the I Consolidated Revenue, should pay for !all hospital and charitable, aid services, the-. testimony of the public records, the -memories of the people, and the speeches of his own colleague, contradict him positively in letter and in fact. "The continuance of this double and treble tax makes it a 'class imposition' —an imposition upon the industrious, thrifty, and saving people throughout the whole country. The Prime Minister could remove this iniquitous impost at once. The money is available, the power is his, but does he lack the inclination or is he in some way prevented fr,om acting as his convictions direct, although, like the Minister of Health, 'he is full of sympathy for the overtaxed local bodies'? The Pi'ime Minister knows, or should know that all the great masters of taxation aim to distribute the burden evenly over all the community."