NEW SOUTH WALES POLITICS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19952, 20 November 1926, Page 12

NEW SOUTH WALES POLITICS.

It has been difficult to believe that the tax on publications which Mr Lang, Premier and Colonial Treasurer of New South Wales, proposes to introduce in order to secure fresh revenue for his financially embarrassed Government is actually to take the form of a tax on newspapers and, presumably, also books. Mr Lang himself, when challenged after the delivery of his Budget speech, refused to state what the nature of the tax would be. It has been surmised, however, that a tax of a halfpenny on newspapers is included in the plan that he has in his mind, and it is on this assumption that the proposal has been criticised. Mr Lang has done many strange and many foolish things, but none more strange and more foolish than to contemplate a tax on knowledge for such a tax, justly described as mediaeval, is wholly discredited by all economists. Two centuries ago a half-penny newspaper tax was imposed in England, and it is interesting to observe that in consequence of it the cheap newspapers at once went out of existence. The introduction of a tax of this description at the present time m New South Wales would inevitably have a similar effect. The weaker papers would have the life crushed out of them, and the tax would prove least disadvantageous to the great metropolitan journals which, all probability, Mr Lang sapiently expects to be most severely hit by it. By his Budget proposals Mr Lang would seem to have fanned into a blaze the discontent which has notoriously been smouldering in the parliamentary Labour Party in the State for some time past. The great majority by which the Labour Conference, a few days ago, confirmed him in the leadership that had a short time previously been re-entrusted to him by the parliamentary party by the narrowest of majorities may have given him a deceptive impression of the measure of his hold upon his followers. If so, the dramatic defection of Mr Loughlin, Secretary for Lauds, will have unpleasantly shaken his sense of security. It has created an interesting situation, opening up the! prospect of a fresh string of violent expulsions from the Labour party.