“RELIEF FOR MONEYED”

Evening Star, Issue 21092, 3 May 1932, Page 7

“RELIEF FOR MONEYED”

GOVERNMENT'S USE OF SECURITIES INTERPRETATION OF LABOUR LEADER [Pei United Press Association.] . WELLINGTON, May 2. Speaking at Lower Hutt this evening, the Lender of the Opposition (Mr H. E. Holland) attacked the Governments’s latest pronouncement in connection with its taxation policy. Mr Holland said that when the salary and wage reductions and the fiat rate wages tax were protested against the working men were told that tho taxpayers with the high incomes would have to contribute their quota towards meeting the national liabilities. Later the Minister of Finance intimated that in order to keep the deficit in the current year down to £2,000,000 he would have to save over £4,000,000 in expenditure and raise over £2,000,000 in additional taxation. Now it was announced that £2,300,000 was to be borrowed from tho banks on the security of the reserve locked up in the soldier settlement lands, and no further taxes were to bo imposed this year. The Labour Party, proceeded Mr Hoiland, had repeatedly protested that the country could not continue to increase taxation without strengthening tho source from . which tho taxes were drawn. Labour had always been opposed to the Government’s policy of burning tho candle at both ends—by reducing the incomes of the people and increasing the taxes on what remained —but the Government was now giving the wealthier taxpayers immunity from further taxation. Tire new loan from tho banks was solely for this purpose and was not to facilitate production or to reduce the existing debt. It meant blowing out the candle at the wrong end. The interest on the new loan would be an additional charge on the Consolidated Fund, and in a year’s time they would possibly find the Government telling them that, in order to balance the Budget, further salary and wage reductions would have to be made. Tho rank and file of tho people would feel they had been made victims of a political confidence trick in this connection.

If taxes wore to bo imposed, continued Mr Holland, they should fall in the first instance on the incomes of tho wealthy. For a number of years, however, Labour had consistently argued that tho way out of the difficulty was not by increasing taxation but by utilising the people’s credit. The hypothecation of the soldier settlement securities was the equivalent of a very modified use of the people’s credit, arid in this case it had been used for the relief of the moneyed class that did not need relief. A better way would be to utilise the whole of the public credit in the dominion in a wide effort towards reconstruction and rehabilitation.

In reply to a question at the conclusion of the meeting, Mr Holland said tho Labour Party was not in favour of strikes. At tho present time of deflation and unemployment strikes were not likely to be successful and were very inadvisable. A resolution was carried, with two dissentients, demanding the repeal of the legislation concerning the reduction of wages and pensions, and the resignation of the Government.