NO PROSPECT OF REDUCED TAXATION SAYS PROF. MURPHY

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6671, 26 July 1928, Page 10

NO PROSPECT OF REDUCED TAXATION SAYS PROF. MURPHY

• Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Last Night; ■“With our present cimmittmCnts, ’ said Professor B. E. Murphy when delivering an address on taxation at the annual conference of the New Zealand Farmers 7 Union to-night, “there is no prospect of taxation being appreciably reduced in Now Zealand for many years, if at all. , . “If we increase our wealth and the number of our productive citizens wo may spread the • present burden over a wider area and tlius. reduce its average weight. That is all that wo can reasonably hope; for the tendencies to greatly increased expenditure* arc not confined to New Zealand, nor arc our politicians specially* to blame as compared with politicians elsewhere. They arc world-wide phenomena and arc quo mainly to a combination of causes. • ‘ The great depreciation in the value of money had caused an increase in the cost of State administration. This

growth had been caused by a,considcrable increase in relative cost of war and preparations for war. w;;'-'.'

“A considerable - extension of tyro population and a great expansion in the functions of the State, notably i a the direction of new social services, the banc of New Zealand administra- 1 tiou for the last thirty odd years, has been expenditure by the State to an extent and in directions that appear to me to be extravagant. “It seems to me that an even.more urgent-task at the present time is to curb and curtail public expenditure than to reduce taxation.’ *