MUSIC AND LITERATURE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20904, 19 December 1929, Page 11

MUSIC AND LITERATURE.

PROTECTIVE TAXATION. MR ALFRED HILL’S ADVOCACY. (Special to Dailt Times.) WELLINGTON. December 18. Speaking of the Federal tax on “ talkies ” and also on music and literature now being* mooted in Australia, Mr • Alfred Hill (of the staff of the New South Wales Conseryatorium of Music), who arrived in Wellington by the Maunganui, stated that he had always been a great advocate of Australia’s own men composing hcr music, especially the lighter kinds and writing her literature. “ Why should we import so much jazz from America and allow cheap literature to come into Australia and New Zealand free of duty?" he asked. “Why, for instance, - should such a man as Hugh M‘Rae, a poet, and a very whimsical poet at that, hare to get his friends practically to finance him to give a couple of lectures in Sydney to keep the pot boiling? He is a great lyrical poet and should be earning his living at writing, but we allow all this cheap stuff in free. His father was the ' father of poetry’ in Australia. He lived to a great age and was a friend of Marcus * Clarke, Lindsay Gordon, the poet, Kendall, the poet, and all those people. It was those men that Hugh M'Crtie was ' lecturing on. I would make the conditions such that a man like that could find a living, and a decent living too, in his own . country. Why should brains have to get out of the country to earn a living? Similar taxation to aid music and literature would not be a bad thing for New Zealand too."