Australian Tax Cuts Provoke the Opposition

Grey River Argus, 24 February 1949, Page 6

Australian Tax Cuts Provoke the Opposition

CANBERRA, February 23. In the Federal House of Representatives there was a debate on financial policy. The Opposition leaders declared that in spite of the Government’s cuts in taxes, most Australians were worse off to-day than five years ago. Instances quoted in support of their argument were: That a man earning £BOO yearly, who had a wife and dependent child, paid £207 in tax in 1945. After next June he will pay only £65, leaving him ostensibly £ll4 better off, but, because of rising costs, the purchasing value of £BOO to-day, it was stated, was only £650. A man earning £4OO yearly, if he had a wife and two children, to-day received 14s weekly more in his pay envelope than live years ago, but it cost him about £2 more weekly to live.

The Minister of Post-war Reconstruction, Mr J. J. Dedman, said it was quite untrue that tax reductions Imd been counter-balanced by a fall in the value of money. Mr A. W. Fadden, Leader of the Country Party, claimed that Mr Chifley’s taxation policy was unsound, because taxation cuts had been so long delayed that post-war recovery ahd living costs had been jeopardised. The cuts had been made more according to political opportunism than national necessity. Socialistic philosophy, financed by taxing private enterprise, had been adopted as a means towards post-war recovery.