TAX ON ORCHARDS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16375, 1 November 1916, Page 6

TAX ON ORCHARDS

The explanation given by the Minister for Agriculture will hardly allay the irritation that has been caused by the autocratic demand by his Department for the registration of orchards. Mr. Mac Donald is pleased to dismiss the question as " a very simple proposal" upon which the public has placed an " extraordinary construction." Apparently it is the very simplicity of the proposal which has deceived the Minister and misled the Department into a proceeding that has caused a great deal of unnecessary inconvenience to the general public and involved an entirely unnecessary and wasteful expenditure of public money. Mr. Mac Donald makes no attempt to defend the preposterous application of the terra orchard to "one or more fruit trees" ; he ignores the fact that the Department has no statutory authority for its threat to penalise, to the extent of £20 the unregistered owner of a single fruit tree; he makes no excuse for the absurdity of compiling a new register of names which will be almost a new edition of the post office directory. The, official staterrcnt from' Wellington a fortnight .ago was to the, effect that the register was intended to assist the Department to stamp out orchard pests. That explanation was so obviously inadequate that the Minister now frankly admits that its real purpose is to facilitate the collection of a tax on commercial orchards. In other words, ho has admitted that zealous Departmental officers have subjected the general public to unnecessary inconvenience, have done a great deal of useless work at the public expense, and have threatened the public with penalties which they had no right to impose, in order to discover the names of orchardists who are growing fruit for sale. The ''extraordinary" aspect of the whole affair is really that the Department has demanded the registration of fruit trees in which it had no interest, and has concealed its real purpose of collecting a tax behind the excuse of eradicating orchard pests and diseases.