TAXATION YIELD BIGGER

Southland Times, Issue 23308, 18 September 1937, Page 8

TAXATION YIELD BIGGER

GOVERNMENT POLICY CRITICIZED FINANCIAL RECKLESSNESS ALLEGED (From Our Parliamentary Reporter) WELLINGTON, September 17. Reactions from the Government’s past legislation were enumerated by Mr J. Hargest (Nat., Awarua) during the Ad-dress-in-Reply debate in the House of Representatives today. At the start of his speech Mr Hargest made reference to the recent Imperial Conference and the state of the Empire. The greater part of the world, he said, seemed to be on a foundation of shifting sands, but the Empire stood like the Rock of Gibraltar itself and in its strength would be the greatest factor for world peace in the years ahead. Referring to the speech of Mr E. L. Cullen (Lab., Hawke’s Bay) Mr Hargest said an unwarranted slight had been cast on all the farmers of the Dominion. Mr Cullen had said that during the depression the farmers had engaged any sort of labour as long as they received subsidies from the Unemployment Board. The fact of the matter was that many farmers had realized their duty in the effort to relieve unemployment and had engaged a man to carry out work which otherwise would not have been undertaken. The main reason why people in cities had suffered during the slump was that the incomes of the farmers had fallen. Today’s prosperity was the result of the recovery in the income of the farmers.

Appreciative remarks concerning the conduct of the Government’s affairs by the Minister of Education (the Hon. P. Fraser) during his term as acting Prime Minister were made by Mr Hargest, but no such reference, he said, could be made to the performances of the ministerial delegations which went overseas during the recess. The trade mission had resulted in a miserable failure and in spite of offers to British manufacturers the Prime Minister had returned to New Zealand and announced a policy of economic nationalism with an increased development of local secondary industries. The Prime Minister (the Rt. Hon. M. J. Savage): The fact of the matter is that I never said anything like that. • Mr Hargest: The reports are there and that is the inference that everyone drew from the Prime Minister’s remarks. WORK OF PAST GOVERNMENT The main activity of the Government, Mr Hargest continued, was to decry the efforts of its predecessors. Nevertheless, the previous Government had balanced its budget and at the same time had decreased taxation and restored a greater proportion of the pension and wages cuts than had been restored by the Labour Party. In addition, it had lowered the cost of living without lowering the standard. The sales tax had been applied as an emergency measure and with an enormous revenue at its disposal the Labour Government could easily have redeemed its promise and removed that measure. In point of fact, the present Government had increased direct taxation by £5,380,000 in one year, a rise of 25 per cent. The total taxation yield was £31,000,000, and in one year of the depression the total income from exports had been only £34,000,000. If the depression conditions returned the Government would require almost the whole of the income from exports to finance its schemes.

The taxation policy of the Government, Mr Hargest continued, represented a combination of class prejudice and financial recklessness. A case had been quoted in which the graduated land tax on a Canterbury farm had increased from £lBO to £lO9O. “It is no use the Government saying that there are no objections to the guaranteed price,” Mr Hargest said. “At a meeting in Southand three of the principal speakers who denounced, the price were members of the committee supporting my opponent at the last general election. The farmers had not agreed to the fixation of the price and they had not agreed to the principle of a commandeer. *The injustice of the position was revealed by the fact that a wharf labourer could earn £2 10/a day in loading farmer’s butter on to steamers, but the farmer himself in producing that butter 'could not hope to earn a third of that sum.”