Readers Write

Northern Advocate, 14 September 1944, Page 2

Readers Write

I have just seen a photograph of the Maori carpentry class at Rotorua, and also read a review of the new

MAORI YOUTH

American boo k. “Strange Fruit.” It every Maori girl

is taught mothercraft, dressmaking, food values, Red Cross, and horticulture, and every Maori boy is taught carpentry, interior decoration and fruit culture, then the Maori race will take its right place not only as our equals but our superiors. This can only be accomplished by the Maori parents and elders energetically organising youth work, and keeping at it with determined skill. We most certainly do not want racial troubles in New Zealand, and the only way to prevent them is to carry the Women’s Institute, and all other kindred organisations, to the most remote corners of our land. The Maori mothers are mostly very fine people, but the Maori fathers are not so active. Maori culture clubs, where books like “The Old-Time Maori” arc discussed, could, be started everywhere.

The Maori race must aim at a peace victory—the victory of righteousness over wrongdoing. Maori fathers, grandfathers and grandsons need to shoulder the responsibilities of peace. —CAROLINE THOMPSON. Hi

We have it on the authority of certain “Village Hampdens” of the Far North that the movement to abclish

HOSPITAL TAXATION

the hospital rate is but the prelude for total derating! Certainly

the demand looks formidable—on paper at least. The N.Z. Sheepowners’ Federation, the N.Z Farmers’ ’Union, the N.Z. Municipal Association, the N.Z. Counties’ Association, reinforced by such local bodies as are prepared to co-operate in the work of destroying local government. are to demand the abolition, of seven and a-half millions of annual local taxation, the deficit to be repaired by further taxation of shearers, rouseabouts, waterside workers, and others eiusdem generis. Nevertheless there are still people who dare to say that taxation should fall not on persons but property, and that rates, to borrow the definition of the Right Hon. G. J. Goschen, Chancellor of the Exchequer in the first Salisbury Ministry, are “a rent-charge in favour of the community.” There are also people cld-fashioned enough to believe that the land of the nation is something in. which every man, woman and child has a natural right and that rates and land-value taxation are the only means by which that right can be asserted and secured.

Further, it may be pointed out that when the so-called N.Z. Farmers’ Union some 17 years ago demanded rural derating, the late Right Hon. J. G. Coates, addressing the annual conference in Wellington, pointed out (a) that rural derating would be followed by a demand for the derating of farm lands in boroughs, and (b) by complete derating, and be added that the country coulcl not afford to lose so much revenue, nor would it be equitable for the Government to assume responsibility for it by levying further customs or other taxation. Mr Coates might have added that the abolition of rates necessarily involved the abolition of all local governing bodies, and that the ultimate result must be to aggravate the evil of centralisation. I will add in conclusion a few practical illustrations showing how the abolition of the hospital rate, though a small instalment of total derating, would work out in Wellington. The greatest estate in Wellington is valued for rating purposes at £303,000, or which the unimproved value is £143,000, and the abolition of the hospital rate would mean an annual dividend to this opulent and indefensible monopoly of £llsO. The next greatest estate would receive £BSO per annum. We have here 49 licensed hotels, having an average unimproved value of £13,000 each, and these would receive an average rebate of £lOl per annum. In reality, however, this latter item means that the brewers would get an annual dividend of something like £OOO. Our opponents dare not give these practical illustrations, but they will hear much about them as their crusade against the public interest proceeds, and they may rely upon it that the masses of the people are irrevocably and implacably opposed to such a daring imposition.— R. G. VARLOW, Secretary, N.Z. League for the Taxation of Land Vaiues (Inc.), Wellington.