BURSTING UP ESTATES

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LII, Issue 16200, 25 November 1926, Page 14

BURSTING UP ESTATES

UNIMPROVED VALUES TAX. NEW SOUTH WALES PROPOSAL. SYDNEY, November 4. The announcement that there is likely to be included in the Government’s new land bill a clause imposing a tax on the ■unimproved value of large estates exceeding £20,000, in order to break up big estates and encourage closer settlement, has naturally aroused the criticism of those who do not see eye to eye with the Government. Within the last- 20 years it has cost, about £14,000,000 to place about 7000 men on the land under Closer Settlement- Acts.

The attitude, in effect-, of the antiLabor press is that to tax holdings which are regarded as large, in order to force them into agriculture, will not help the State’s loans in London, that our ability to pay the interest on those loans depends upon our exports, the most valuable of which is wool, and that any proposal to force the conversion of more wool-growing Land into wheat-growing land is a step which may have harmful rather than beneficial results. The point is emphasised that the Government proposes to increase the production of one profitable rural enterprise at the expense of a more profitable rural'activity, and thus diminish not only the value of our exports, but also the surplus, which should be used to pay our interest bill abroad.

These fears, howevej, about the turnover from sheep to wheat are not likely to influence the Government one iota. Its bete noir is not the Nationalist press, but the Legislative Council. If it can only push that chamber out of the way, or feel a bit more ’certain of its support there, it can go merrily ahead, especially as it looks as though it will be more strongly entrenched than ever under the new redistribution of seats.