THE BUDGET.

Evening Star, Issue 23335, 3 August 1939, Page 8

THE BUDGET.

TO TUB BOl'fOU. Sir, —In your leading article dated August 2, you certainly have outshone yourself in what is no doubt another of your many attempts to belittle the Labour Government, while on another page you conveniently published a table of income tax comparisons. However, it seems to be universally admitted, even by the Opposition, that increased defence expenditure is imperative, but no one seems to he able to tell the Government iiow to raise the money without extra taxation. No doubt the poor fanner, along with many others, will bo hard hit by the extra 4d per gallon which has been imposed on petrol, as you suggest in your leader, but 1 ’have never seen your paper advocating an investigation to ascertain just how much of the petrol bought by tho fanners tax-free in the past had actually been used! on the land, and how much had been used in their private cars. As regards the income tax increases, 1 do not think we need take them seriously. We will take as an example the man with wife and two dependent children, earning £365 per year. That sum works out at approximately £7 0s 4d a week for 52 weeks, and I consider that any man who cannot provide for a wife and two children out of £7 0s 4d a week and still put away the huge amount of 7d a week for income tax does not deserve to have any income at all. Surely no honest New Zealander would object to paying 7d a week out of a total income of £7 Os 4dl when it is realised that it will help to strengthen, our national defences. During the reign of the National Government your paper praised the then Government for the fine efforts it was making on behalf of tho relief workers, who, gt that time, had to eke out an existence on less than £2 a week for a married man with wife and two dependent children. Surelv that proves gross inconsistencies on the part of the so-called imoartial Press. At the same time I was working in a single men’s public works

camp over 12 hours a day seven a week for the princely remuneration of 12s (id a week plus meals, and had to put in the winter in a tent which lacked even a door—and there was no wailing by the editor of the Dunedin ‘.Evening Star’ over'that either! Further, you state that the Labour Government’s monetary embarrassments are largely of its own creating, but you sav nothing of the millions borrowed by the Coalition and National Governments which are falling due next year. Presumably the Labour Government is to blame for this too, as well as the huge amount of money it has had to spend to replace public works machinery which was sold by the National Government in a bold attempt to balance the Budget and mislead the public.—l am, etc., August 3 A.H.