TAXATION PROPOSALS

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 194, 15 July 1930, Page 7

TAXATION PROPOSALS

PROTESTS IN AUSTRALIA. ASSOCIATION FORMED. DRASTIC ECONOMY IN VICTORIA. (United Press Association. —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright.) Received July 15, 9.40 a.m. SIDNEY, July 15. Protests against the Federal Budget taxation proposals continue throughout the Commonwealth. An association has been formed in Sydney to conduct a State-wide campaign against excessive taxation. Mr J. H. Scullin says that the Government is seeking to achieve in the best possible way stability in the nation’s finances and to bring about a position where Australia can pay her creditors and look tlie world in the face. A message from Fremantle states that Sir Otto Niemeyer, the noted financial authority, who was invited to Australia by the Federal Ministry, arrived there’to-day by the liner Cathay from Loudon.

A message from Melbourne says that the State Ministry is undertaking a policy of drastic economy throughout all the Government departments. It is expected that all increments to public servants and teachers will be stopped in the current year, and that a reduction of certain salaries will be attempted. GLOOMY OUTLOOK. BUSINESS MAN’S IMPRESSIONS. WELLINGTON, July 15. “One thing that strikes you more than anything else in Australia, is the way in which the severe financial depression has developed into a deep mental depression affecting practically the whole community,” said Mr D. A. Solomon, of the well-known Dunedin legal firm, who returned by the Makura yesterday morning from a three weeks’ holiday in the Commonwealth. Mr Solomon had a good deal to say about Australian affairs in general, but this growing and gloomy mental condition, an outcome of the business and trade depression, had impressed him most of all. “I have been across to Australia several times in the past,” he said, “but I have never seen it like that before.”

People in their offices, people whom he had seen many times before and who had always been normally bright and untroubled, were no longer the same, said Mr Solomon. They turned the subject to existing Australian conditions in the first few minutes of conversation, and their outlook was a worried and distressed one. _ Australian business-men were all quite aware of the condition of their country, and many now thought twice before using their cars and then took a tram instead. A small thing in itself, said Mr Solomon, but an index to the amount, of actual worry that the situation was causing.