UNRATED LAND.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19476, 11 May 1925, Page 7

UNRATED LAND.

GOVERNMENT EXEMPTIONS

(From Oub Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY. May 1. In the city of Sydney there is more than £1,000,000 worth of Crown land (excluding altogether the value of buildings), which is exempted from the council's rating. The rates on this property would amount to nearly £20,000 a year, which would allow the Labour caucus a nice little sum to play with if it could only get its fingers upon it. Some of the aldermen are so angry at the action of both the Federal and State Governments in exempting themselves from paying rates, when they are making everyone else pay them, that they propose to take action. One site alone, that on which the G.P.O; is built, and which changed hands for a bottle of rum or some othfr trifling thing in the days when Sydney was a wilderness and was dotted only by bullock tracks, is valued on the unimproved value basis at £382,000, while the commonwealth Bank site, a few yards away is assessed at £IOO,OOO. Land vested in the Water and Sewerage Board, the Sydney University Trust, and other trusts, is also exempt from the council’s rating. The unimproved capital. value of the Federal Government’s property in the city is close on £IOO,OOO. The council looks upon the Federal and State Governments as plain buccaneers.