Sayings of the Week

Northland Age, Volume 1, Issue 3, 23 October 1931, Page 10

Sayings of the Week

The Prime Minister in Parliament : “Today the farmers are absolutely desperate. There is scarcely a single farmer in Canterbury who is not paying his taxes, rates and wages out of capital. Many of them are going into debt to do it. The farmers are suffering more heavily as the result of the depression than any other class.”

Archbishop Averill to the Anglican Synod: “It is surely the bounden duty of the Church to support in every way such a movement as that for disarmament, and to encourage, draw out and develop the yearning spirit which lies behind it and which is supplying its real dynamic. Even partial disarmament, so long as it is really international, will not only contribute to the lightening of the world’s financial burden, but also of the world’s spiritual burden.”

The Minister of Finance defending the abolition of the graduated land tax : “It should be remembered that when graduated land tax was imposed there was; no tax imposed on incomes from the land. The farmer is now complaining that he secures no relief

in bad times, owing to the necessity for paying land tax whether he made a profit on the year’s working or not. As a matter of principle and equity, the true basis of taxation should be the capacity and ability of a man to pay according to his income.”

Right Hon. J. G. Coates on his Unemployment policy: “Primary production from our farm lands, is the keystone of the Dominion’s economic structure. It is essential that the unemployed labour should be directed from road and unproductive work to productive work on the farms. This is the policy which the Unemployment Board, by every possible means, intends to pursue. So far as men engaged on road work are concerned, the ideal must be to move them ‘over the fence’ on to the land.”