FRIGHTENING LENDERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 510, 13 November 1928, Page 16

FRIGHTENING LENDERS

BIG LOANS FALLING DUE LABOUR REVIEWS POSITION “We have £24,000,000 o£ our loans falling due next year, and if we renew at the rates that reissues have been costing us lately, those loans are going to cost us £264,000. We cannot go ahead borrowing huge sums von top of things like this, even if lie money-lenders do not take fright.” This was a statement by Mr. J. A. Lee, Labour candidate for Auckland East, at Grafton Library last evening. The speaker was able to speak with but two interjections, and was accorded a vote of confidence, carried with cheers. Mr. Lee dealt mainly with finance, and stressed the policy of internal borrowing advocated by his party. He pointed out that the superintendent of State Advances had told the Government he could raise millions of pounds for development work if he was allowed to accept deposits as the Savings Bank did, but the Government had turned this down because it meant entering into competition with the private banks. To tflie Government, he said, the people of the country meant less than the shareholders in the associated banks.

Dealing with the exemption from income tax of the large landowners, he said members of the Government had used the machinery of the legislation to exempt themselves from taxation. One Wairarapa family had secured an increase in its income of £20,000 from the rise in the price of wool in one year, but it did not pay a penny more to the taxes. Mr. Lysnar, he said, had 24,000 sheep, Mr. Noswortby some 20,000, Mr. Williams 20,000, and they were all getting out of taxation in the same way. The Reform Government had made it more and more diflieult for the £4OO to £BO a year man, but had made a point of not increasing the taxation of the £IO,OOO a year squatters. Had they been fairly taxed there would have been less need for going outside for money on loan.