FOR AUSTRALIA

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 56, 4 September 1945, Page 5

FOR AUSTRALIA

LIBERALS' PROGRAMME

SYDNEY, September 2. An all-round reduction of the taxation burden and an adequate housing programme were placed in the forefront of the Liberal Party's policy by the leader of the Federal Parliamentary Liberal Party, Mr. R. G. Menzies, hi a speech at the official inauguration of the party. Mr. Menzies said that there was every reason why taxation should be reduced at once for there could be little doubt that even substantially reduced taxation would hardly affect the total tax yield in the next few years when civil production would be enormously increased. The Liberal Party believed the housing problem should be solved by the prompt, wholesale release of man-power for the production of building mateiiials. _ Public works should be restricted to those which were needed for housing expansion. Private enterprise should be encouraged as the best means of getting houses built. The party wanted to increase standards of living by increasing production to win new markets by making cheaper goods. It believed that cheap production depended on efficiency, not wage-slashing. The Liberal Party would vigorously pursue a policy of generous provision for supprannuation, incapacity, sick pay, medical, unemployment, and widowhood expenses. There would be no means test.

The lifting of restrictions on the manufacture of a further 43 items is announced by the Minister of Postwar Reconstruction, Mr. J. J. Dedman. The items include jewellery, musical instruments, dish-washing machines, clothes-washing machines. vacuum cleaners, lawn mowers, electric lighting ware, horse-floats, and motor caravans.