PETROL & BEER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 August 1939, Page 5

PETROL & BEER

DEBATE ON NEW TAXES

OPPOSITION CRITICISM.

MINISTER ON DEFENCE NEEDS.

(By Telegraph.) (Special to "Times-Age.") WELLINGTON. This Day.

Formal resolutions authorising the raising of the duty on petrol from 10jd lo Is 2kl a gallon and the duly on beer from Is 3d to Is 9d a gallon were briskly criticised in the House of Representatives last evening. The resolutions were debated vigorously for an hour before being carried.

A brief explanation of the resolution was made by the Acting-Minister of Customs, Mr Mason, while the House was in committee, and this gave rise to a storm of protest from the Opposition benches. Criticism centred almost entirely on the extra petrol tax. which it was contended would be a crushing blow to the farmer who used petrol in, connection with the cultivation of his property. “The cry seems to be ‘More money, more money; we want more money.’ ” said the Leader of the Opposition. Mr Hamilton. It would be difficult to debate the resolutions without a little more previous knowledge of their contents, he said, but the Opposition would enter an emphatic protest against the substantial additions that had been made to taxation.

The petrol tax would apparently go on to all users, said Mr Hamilton, and would immediately result in a substantial increase of the costs of agriculturists. If the money was to be spent for highways, it should be provided by users of the highway, and not by back country men who used a petrol engine, and dairy-farmers who milked with a petrol engine. “It seems a queer way of assisting the production of the country,” said Mr Hamilton. “When we are told by members of the Opposition that the farmers use petrol for necessities and other people for luxuries, we find that difficult to believe,” said Mr Mason. “The community cannot be divided into those two definitite classes, and the Opposition is hard put to it when it has to use that argument. Actually, motoring is cheap in this country. There are splendid roads, and in spite of the fact that some of the petrol tax has gone to the Consolidated Fund, more has been spent on the roads. We have nothing like the horse-power tax they have in some countries."

If a motorist did 5000 miles a year in a car that went 25 miles to the gallon, the Minister added, the increased duty would means an extra £2 3s 4d. That was nothing to get hysterical about. Mr Polson (Opposition. Stratford): “Those figures are a product of your imagination."

With a car doing 20 miles to the gallon the extra cost would be £4 3s 4d a year, Mr Mason added, so that when the actual figures were looked at there was nothing to justify the wild excitement of the Opposition. The Acting-Leader of the House. Mr Faser, said the additional tax on petrol was in its very essence a defence tax. “If there were no extra expenditure on defence there would be no extra petrol tax." he added. “If tomorrow the world situation clears up the tax comes off. (Loud Opposition laughter). I am not going to promise the same thing about the beer tax. There should be. however, no difference of opinion as far as defence is concerned."