HOSPITAL RATING

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 65, Issue 5492, 1 July 1942, Page 5

HOSPITAL RATING

WORKERS’ UNION ATTITUDE A resolution opposing the abolition of the hospital rate, as desired by the New Zealand Sheepowners’ Federation, the New Zealand Municipal Association, the New Zealand Counties’ Association, and other local bodies and organisations, which wish to make the hospitals a charge on general taxation, or by increasing the wages tax, was carried at the recent conference of the New Zealand Workers’ Union. The resolutino urges that as the community (or unimproved) value of land belongs to the whole of the people, the cost of hospitals is a proper charge upon it: that the Consolidated Fund is largely derived from taxes on labour, and so the demand that hospital costs should be a charge upon it, or on the Social Security Funds means the relief of property at the expense of the masses; that the importance of local bodies is due to their power of taxing their constituents; the abolition of the hospital rate would mean the abolition of liospital boards, the centralisation of control, and the impairment of local government. That the wages tax should be abolished, and the deficit repaired by an increase in the land tax, as men who have no property should be exempt from taxation.