NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Waipa Post, Volume XVII, Issue 963, 3 July 1920, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

SALARY OF PARLIAMENTARIANS. THE invitation extended to members of Parliament in the Governor’s speech to exempt their salaries from taxation is not one that will appeal to their constituents. The proposal is one that the Government would be well advised to abandon. Members of Parliament have quite enough special privileges as it is without the privilege of putting burdens on the public’s back which they are not prepared to bear themselves. We have never been able to perceive that election to Parliament endows the politician with more altrusitie sentiments than are possessed by the ordinary citizen, and it is a sound principle that Ministers and members in levying taxation should do so in the knowledge that they will individually be affected by it in exactly the same way as the general public. In the case of the judges the objections do not hold good to the same extent, but the principle remains a bad one. The effect of taxation during the war on judges salaries has been exactly the same as on the salaries of other people in the same financial position . That the judicial salaries are inadequate has been obvious for some time past, and they certainly should be increased, but we can find nothing to be said for, and a good deal against, the creation of any special non-tax-paying section of the community.