TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 5th AUGUST, 1936. POLITICS TAKE PRACTICAL FORM.

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 53, Issue 3791, 5 August 1936, Page 4

TE AWAMUTU COURIER. Printed on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. WEDNESDAY, 5th AUGUST, 1936. POLITICS TAKE PRACTICAL FORM.

LABOUR’S first Budget, translating politics into practical form, is distinctly disappointing. It produces nothing.that can be regarded as a departure from orthodox finance, and where much was expected in the fulfilment of theories so vigorously pleaded in the past, little that is not orthodox remains. Read in conjunction with the session’s earlier legislation, it simply means that the country is being asked to shoulder bigger burdens than ever. No respite from borrowing is offered —indeed, it could not well be offered since public works expenditure has been made the keynote of considerable social service. Quite contrary to all expectation, the avenues of indirect taxation have been preserved. Labour’s promise had been consistent in a pledge to ease the burden of customs levy the exchange ramp was to disappear, and very certainly the abolition of the sales tax was a

pre-election plank; but Labour in office and Labour in the role of the critic is a different entity. When theory has to give way to practical necessity there is clearly no room for those grandiose beliefs which can surround any promise. It would seem that Labour has never yet paused to consider whether there really is any limit to the burden which industry and enterprise can carry. Its policy so far has been to over-burden costs in all citizen activity; to depreciate the currency in an effort to speed up spending power. Whatever social benefits are contemplated are off-set by the tide of rising costs. The Budget aggravates this tendency, as the levy on the citizen — on the spending power of the community—is made more severe. The domicile of some of the debt may have been changed but the incidence of the debt remains. Up to the present time Labour has certainly not found the magic wand which it fondly supposed was so easily within reach to transform the burden of costs into the blessing of a tax-free service.

For the dairy farmer there is no consolation in the Budget. Ail that iias happened is that he has been removed from his market. Virtually he has forfeited his consignment policy overnight, and must compulsorily give acceptance to a national f.o.b. sale on a gigantic scale, With the buyer dictating the whole of the terms. All that is conceded to him : s a guarantee for the whole season, and to that degree his returns are stabilised. * But whether the old method of factory disposal for f.o.b. sales would have pegged his price at a higher level is not a very prob lematical question. The buyer in this case has taken as a level an average at the trough of the depression, whereas the market-place would have been regulated by to-day’s prices. Certainly the dairy farmer has little to thank the Government for. If he sets against the guaranteed price the pegging of costs in every service which surrounds him at an enforced level, and also the reintroduction of the land tax to swell his costs still further, he is more than probably very much worse off in the political transaction. The one remaining ray of hope for the farmer is the promised readjust ment of mortgages. But here again new difficulties arise, or, rather, old difficulties promise to be magnified. Whether the existing tendency to place the whole burden of adjustment on private enterprise, whitewashing the mistakes of the Government as a money-lender, will be disclosed soon now. If the savings of private citizens are to be depreciated—if the community is to accept additional burdens to level investment resources to a guaranteed price which bases on depression years a net gain to anybody will not be realised. Very certainly the butter-fat price, from which so much was expected, is singularly disappointing. Hopes may have run too high. The Government has yet to employ its bargaining weapon on the overseas market; it could not well have done so had its price at this end created the impression of a dumping of produce. Practical policies forbade such a course. Equally, too, practical politics—politics as we know them—inspire the belief that a part of the Government plan may have reposed in the belief that it was expedient to create a reserve in the Dairy Industry Account for distribution when election year arrives, which simply proves the folly of trying to mix business with politics.