TAXATION AND SETTLEMENT

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8734, 16 May 1914, Page 4

TAXATION AND SETTLEMENT

It is certainly a significant and substantial concession xo Liberalism and Liberal policy to find Mr Massey saying that during twelve months thirtyseven thousand acres of land were subdivided in Hawke's Bay as a result of the graduated land tax. We should like to have seen the report headed up appropriately in the squatters' organ, instead of being given an ordinary paragraph, hut that journal spared its headlines to boom another declaration by the Prime Minister more to the liking of the land monopolists, in which the re-purchase policy was loudly lauded. But while the Tory leader has at last spoken approvingly of the principle of progressive land taxation, which ho and his party so bitterly opposed in the past, the figures he has quoted are fully sufficient to show that tho schedule of taxation is not yet anything like high enough to appreciably combat tho blight of monopoly which is keeping the province of Hawke’s Bay in a comparative state of stagnation and affecting the whole of Now Zealand disastrously, though in varying degrees. According to the Official Itear-Book, five Hawke’s Bay squatters in 1911 held 428,168 acres of land; sixteen were in possession of 705,248 acres; forty-eight held 1,180,934 acres; one hundred and twenty-eight held 1,748,037 acres. At tho present rate of repurchase by the State and of subdivision owing to the pressure of the land tax, it will take an exceedingly long time to make an impression upon this stronghold of squattocracy. What tho country wants is a Liberal Government in place of a land monopolists’ Government—a Ministry and a party that will not he content with the snail’s pace at which settlement is proceeding, that will substantially increase the graduated tax and do something effective to give the people to whom the land rightly belongs reasonable access to the soil. The present rate of subdivision will not do. Tho fact that it pleases Mr Massey, is sufficient proof of that. Tho figures quoted by tho Prime Minister are as nothing compared.' with the area monopolised. What is going on. now is little better than the Hon. H. D. Bell’s attempts to feed tho trout in Lake Taupo on tinned shrimps.