Untitled

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLI, Issue 3, 15 July 1908, Page 2

During the last five years the population of New Zealand has increased just twice as fast as that of the Commonwealth, and however Mr. Deakin and Sir Wm. Lyne may try to explain this fact, it is a very bad advertisement for Australia. Either the country must not be what it is claimed to be, or its advantages are neutralised by bad government. Between the natural increase of the Dominion and this country there is little difference; it is further off Europe, has not been settled half as long, and was at the date of last census nearly six times as thickly inhabited as Australia. Nevertheless, whilst our population has grown at little more than 4J per cent yearly, New Zealandfs has increased by over 3 per cent. Whereas since 1901 the number of souls per square mile has risen in the latter from 7.4 to near 9 in the former, it has only grown from 1.27 to 1.4. In this respect, while our neighbour almost ranks with such old colonised States of the American Union as California and Florida, Australia can only find a parallel for its emptiness in the newest territories.

The gentleman who has been hanging on to land round about Sydney, in the expectation that some day neighbours will build and make his little lot valuable, is getting desperate, now that a municipal land-tax has arrived. One estate is advertising that it will give the possession and use of land free to builders. When a sale has been made, the land will have to be paid for, but at a very, low price. The estate wants, -of course, to dodge the land-tax on at-present unoccupied blocks. Also, tired of waiting for somebody else to build on neighbouring landl, it is driven to almost give away some of its own land, so as to create a demand for the balance. It all shows that the land tax is doing just what its friends said it would, vi&g forcing land into use.