The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1930. TAXPAYERS AND UNEMPLOYED.

Evening Star, Issue 20468, 26 April 1930, Page 14

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 1930. TAXPAYERS AND UNEMPLOYED.

The lengthy review of tho dominion’s nuances by tho Prime (Minister takes tho place of a policy speech usually delivered by whoever is in charge of tho Treasury as soon as tho results of the financial year ending March 31 arc ascertained. Unfortunately Sir Joseph Ward’s health precludes him from taking tho platform, and he has not deputed that task to a colleague. There is something to bo said in favour of the personal contact between Minister and taxpayers afforded by a public political meeting, if only Id afford responsible legislators the opportunity to sense whether the taxed approve the purposes to which the money required ol them by the State is applied, in this case recently increased taxation constitutes the main burden of the Ministerial statement. Sir Joseph Y ard has the satisfaction of announcing that ho has made his Budget balance to within £150,000, and fortunately this relatively small difference is on the credit side. It is quite obvious that without the additional taxation imposed last session there would have been a deficit instead of a small surplus. Tlio super-tax on land produced a quarter of a million, and what the doubling of the Customs primage duty brought in is not stated, the only details given concerning this source of revenue being that the Cus toms as a whole yielded half a million over the estimate. Tho extra primage duty has served its purpose, but tho status quo ante has only been reverted to in respect of foodstuffs and fertilisers. ,lt is claimed that, besides increasing the revenue.-the-expenditure has been reduced by greater economy in respect of the cost of government, the total of the sums voted by Parliament for tho various departments having been underspent by £220,000. Bub there has been very heavy special expenditure—viz., that devoted to the relief of -unemployment. This has amounted to no less than one and a-halt millions sterling, but how much of that iias been provided out of revenue and how.much out of loan is not stated. Doubtless that will bo disclosed later, and in the 'meantime it is claimed that “ tho taxpayers have generally received value for The money expended,” the works concerned having been of the public utility class and a few of them coming under the designation of reproductive (in which we suppose railway trunk line completion is still placed), while on most of them tho workers have been paid by results—i.c., piecework rather than time sheets determines the remuneration. ’ But the arresting feature of the . portion of the statement relating to unemployment relief is the apparent unpopularity of Government relief. Of those who have tried it no fewer than 9,735 men have lelt it, while 3,700 men have declined even to give it a trial. Those figures mutely, but none tho less insistently, invite an explanation from the spokesmen of the Labour Party, who have either taken it for granted that it is the State’s duty to provide work or maintenance for all sui'plus labour or have emphatically announced that as an axiom. Jt such really he the State’s duty, there must surely bo a corresponding obligation on the part of those demanding work from the Government as a right to undertake it when offered. Meantime the further instalment of the report on unemployment by the special committee, which is at present under +ho Government’s consideration, will be awaited, by the taxpayers with interest and possibly with some trepidation.