LEVY ON RABBITERS

Southland Times, Issue 24756, 29 May 1942, Page 6

LEVY ON RABBITERS

Sir, —I must compliment Mr McGregor on his letter about the rabbit levy appearing in your issue of May 27. In my opinion this levy is one of the most iniquitous regulations ever enforced. The men who through the winter are called upon to pay this heavy impost are giving to the Government a large part of their hardearned money and have no prospect of getting anything in return. If the powers that be were able to guarantee summer rabbiting to the payers of this levy something might be said in favour of it. What is the real position? Simply this—that the Man-Power Committee will see to it that rabbiters are made to shear, harvest and work where their services are most required during the summer months. Certainly they will not be allowed to do summer rabbiting. Thus their chances of getting their own money back are nil. Has all fairness and equity faded from the Labour Party since the great, honest chieftain, Michael Joseph Savage, was laid to rest? • R. J. McCAULEY,

Chairman, Northern Southland Rabbit Committee, Lumsden, May 27.

Sir, —I wish to endorse all that your correspondent W. J. A. McGregor said in his letter of May 25 about, the 6/6 in the pound levy on rabbiters’ earnings. If the money so procured was going to help the war I am sure the authorities would be welcome to it, but it is simply a case of the winter rabbiters having to carry the loafers who go rabbiting in the summer. Are there so many men about just now to do farm work that the Government has to go out of its way to encourage men to loaf all summer on a subsidy catching rabbits that are of little dr no value? Why not tax the summer rabbiters 6/6 in the pound and add it on to winter rabbiters’ cheques in order to get the men on to more useful work in summer and try to encourage them to take on tire hard and dirty work of rabbiting in winter? A rabbiter has to work in all sorts of weather from 5 o’clock in the morning until 10 or 11 at night. He may work all day setting traps and get them all washed out before dark; or he may feed a block for poisoning for a week or more, at the cost of, say £lO, and then strike a bad night and get nothing but a heart-break for all his work. Yet those politicians up in Wellington say he must pay 6/6 in the pound to subsidize the summer loafers to the tune of £6/10/- a week notwithstanding the fact that the average winter rabbiter can only make about £4/10/- a week. BE FAIR.