Queensland

Parliamentary Debates [Hansard]

Legislative Assembly

TUESDAY, 5 AUGUST 1890

Electronic reproduction of original hardcopy

Ways and Means. [5 AuGUST.] Question Without Notice. 461

LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY. Tuesday, 5 Aug·ust, 1890.

Elections Judge for 1390.-Question.-Question With­out :Notice-Chinese on Herbert and Russell River Gold Fields -Constitution Act Amendment Bill­third reading.-Ways and Means-Financial State~ ment.-Adjournment.

The SPEAKER took the chair at half-past 3 o'clock.

ELECTIONS JUDGE FOR 1890. The SPEAKER said : I have to report that I

h>tve received the following me;sage from His Honour the Chief Justice :-

HSIR,

"The Chief .Justice's Chambers, "Supreme Court House,

"Brisbane, 4th August, 1890.

"I have the honour to inform you that the Hon. l\fr .. Justice Real has been nppointed Elect.ion8 Judge for 1890, to act in the place of the late ~ir. Justice l\iein, deceased.

t~ I have the honour to be, Sir, "Your obedient servant,

H CHARLES LILLEY, C.J.

"To the Hon. the Speaker of;the Legislative Assembly.'

QUESTION. Mr. GROOM asked the Minister for Lands-1. \Vhether any reservations of Crown lands have

been made as endowment~ to agricultural college~. in accordance with the resolution passed by the House la8t session?

2. Is it the intention of the Government to submit a proposal to the House this session for the establishment of one or more agricultural colleges?

The MINISTJ;;R FOR LANDS. (Hon. M. H. Black) replied-

1. Not yet. 2. Instructions hr~.ve been issued to Professor Sheltou

to I'eport on suitable localities, which report, when received, will be submitted to Parli 1ment for the pur­pose of giving effect to the resolntion referred to.

QUESTION WITHOUT NOTICE. CHINESE ON HERBERT AND RUSSELL RIVER

GoLD FIELDS. Mr. SAYERS said: Mr. Speaker,-I wish to

aRk the Minister for Mines a question without notice. I had a circular relating to the matter, but I mislaid it or I should have put my (\Uestion on the notice paper. The time during which Chinese can be kept off the Herbert and Russell River Gold Fields will shortly expire, and I wish to know whether the :\iinister has had any com­munication from that district, or whether the Government intend to take any steps to prevent the Chinese from resuming operations there.

'l'he MINISTER FOR MINES (Hon. J. M. Macrossan) said: Mr. Speaker,-In reply to the hon. member for Charters Towers, I may say

462 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means;

that as the law stands at present the Govern­ment have no power to prevent Chinese from working on the Russell River Gold Field. Unless the law is altered there is nothing to pre­vent the issue of miners' rights to Chinese, although, as the hon. member is aware, mineral licenses are not issued to them. The Chinese were the discoverers of the Russell River Gold Field, so that if they have a right to go on any goldfield they have a right to go on that one ; still, if I had the power to prevent them doing so, I would do so. But I have not the power, so that they can go on.

CONSTITUTION ACT AMENDMENT BILL.

THIRD READING.

On the motion of Mr. GROOM, this Bill was read a third time, passed, anrl ordered to be transmitted to the Legislative Council for their concurrence, by message in the usual form.

WAYS AND MEANS.

FINANCIAL STATEMENT.

On the Ordf\r of the Day being read for the resumption of the adjourned debate on Mr. Donaldson's motion-" That the Speaker do now leave the chair, and the House resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole ft1rther to consider of vV ays anrl Means for raising the Supply granted to Her Majesty;" upon which Sir Samuel Griffith had moved, by way of amendment, "That all the words after the word 'that' be omitted with the view to the insertion in their place of the wurds 'the financial proposals of the Government are not satisfactory to the House.'"

Mr. ARCHER said : Mr. Speaker,--Con­sidering the length of this debate and the number of members who have already spoken, it is almoAt impossible to offer anything new upon the oubject; but I fancy that there may be some­thing said to show why, however disagreeable the taxation proposed by the Government may be, it is the least disagreeable method of taxation that can be proposed. The senior member for North Brisbane, the Hon. Sir'r. Meilwraitb, quoted from authoritie,; from an age before the establishment of our religion. I suppose he referred to the Mosaic law when he did so, and I am surprised at his quoting such an authority, for however unsuitable that law may have been for the time when Thioses lived, it is not on that account unsuitable for the nineteenth century. Anything that was suitable for an ag-e so different from that we live in might not be suitable for this ag-e. In the same way the hon. member for "\Vide Bay began with the year 600 B.o., and tried to apply the experiences of that age to this in which we are now living. I do not like to use harsh words, but although the hon. and learned member the leader of the Opposition told us that the Government was either ignorant or inane, I would not like to say that the arguments of his followers are absurd, but it does appear wrong to quote what was done 2,000 or 3,000 years ago_ The senior member for North Brisbane in his opposition to a property tax quoted an authority for which he has not the slightest respect-namely, Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations." It is perfectly wonderful to hear the hon. member quoting from that authority at all, considering the hon. gentleman's opinions. I shall give my opinion of Ad am Smith. I consider him as one of the greatest men ever born in Britain. I know that Buckle in his "History of Civilisa­tion" expresses his wonder that a man with such an enormous power of thinking could have been born in that priest-ridden land-Scotland ; and that,

having examined, and examined minutely, into the character of Adam Smith, he goes on to say with which class of great men he should be bracketed, and he can find no person with whom to do so until he gets back to Sir Isaac Newton. He says deliberately that since Sir Isaac Newton such a mind has not arisen in Great Britain as Adam Smith. My reading has been far too limited to enable me to give an opinion upon such an opinion as that, but that is the candid opinion of a man who had a great reputation in England, and who had certainly a great " down " upon the Scotch as a people. \Ye will bear that, as it does not matter. Now, what did Adam Smith do ? He devoted the best years of his life to writing a work-" The \Vealth of Nations "-and although there were many side is~ues, the gr~at doctrine laid down was that freetrade was the source of the we>tlth of nations. That was his great theory. In some other parts there were, of comee, many side branches, and he has been proved wrong in some things that he wrote by later experience and later writers. For instance, his theory about rent has been proved wrong, but nothing has yet shown that the grpat theory of his book- that of freetrade- was wrong. This theory has P.stablished the btl<>k as the text-bnok over the whole world, but yet the hon. member for North Brisbane who discards the main purpose of the work takes up the points which assi"t him in his arguments and quotes them. Now is that the way to establish a fact? The thing has become so small that I can hardly understand a man of his admitted ability doing such a thing. If we take up a p<>int here and a point there, even in a very faulty writer, we may find .~omething to assist us; but to throw aside the whole of the great scope of that work, which has been the greatest work upon the sub­ject ever publisherl, and take up a little piece which asAists him, appears to me one of those things which show that there are very few authorities to be advanced in favour of the hon. gentleman's arguments. I have the y,leasure of agreeing with Adam Smith, both in his free­trade maxims and in his maxims on tltxation. I think that a property tax should only be used as a last resource, and it is on that ground that I support it now ; and I hope before I sit down to show reasons why I may support such a tax; and although I think another kind of tax would be preferable, yet seeing that we have to raise money, I do not know where we shall get it in any other way than the one proposed, and I am going to support he>trtilythe proposal of the Colonial Trea­surer. There are two ways of meeting-the difficulty we are in-one bydiminishingexpenditure and the other by increased taxation. On the subject of diminishing expenditure the hon. member for North Brisbane, Sir T. Mcihvraith, said he had no hope of anything being done by reducing the expense of the Civil Service. He had tried it and had failed, and he believed it was no use to try that course. The hon. gentleman does not advocate the abolition of the Defence Force, nor does he advocate the breaking of faith with the division>tl boards, and therefore he is 'forced to arrive at the conclusion that money must be raised by taxation to in some way fill the gap caused by the deficit. One way there is in which the hon. gentleman says he has great faith, and that is by taxation through the Customs. The best way of learning what the Customs would now bring in is to see what they have done for us already. We need not go back to ancient history so long as we who are to carry out the trust are a living example of its effects.

. We tried a few years ago to increase the revenue by increasing the Customs duties. The scheme was successful for a short time- for about nine months, I believe, of the year in which they were imposed ; but it has since been

Ways and Means. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and Means. 463

shown that, from whatever cause, the wealth of Queensland has so decreased that taxation through the Customs has failed to increase the revenue in the way expected. How anyone under these circumstances can propose to further increase the Customs duties to raise a still larger revenuP, I cannot understand. That taxation through the Customs has to a certain extent impoverished the people, and there is a very strong feeling against the Customs duties levied in 1888. Those duties are not exceedingly high as compared with the protective colony of Victoria, but they have nevertheless been spoken against and written against, and will be acted against by the people a' soon as they see a chance to have them removed. This scheme, therefore, proposed hy the hon. gentleman would not, I believe, have the effect of producing anything- like the sum required. It would not only not fill the gap of the present deficit, but I do not think it would even tend to decrease it. The country is poorer by reason of adverse season-;, floodsl and other causes, which have brought this deficit about, and I therefore believe this would be the very worst time to try and recoup the Treasury through the Customs, when that method has already proved a hrnken staff. Another item which the hon. gentleman hoped to see revenue from was "serYices." VVell, I may say that for many years, though I may hope to do so, I do not expect to see "services" paying the interest on the money expended on them. It is not surprising that the post and telegraph services are not self-supporting when we condder the enonnous territory ·we have, and the enurmous extent of country over which we have to carry mails hy coaches and in other ways, and· the length of the iines of tele­graph we have to maintain. I say it is not sur­prising that they do not contribute to the revenue ; but it becomes a question as to whether the service they render us is so great as to compensate us for the loss we sustain through them. I think it is. I think it would be a great misfortune to Queensland if we had not easy and ready communication with the out­lying parts of the colony. Things would take place in some parts of the colony which we would not hear of for months were it not for our tele­graph service. And there might be such floods as we had this year, or other disasters occurring in distant parts of the colony which we would not Dnly not be in 3: position to alleviate, but which we would not know of until they culminated, perhaps, in great misfortune to our people if we had not such a service. \V e are bound to keep up .our communication with outside places, and I do not see how it is possible to increase our revenue from these sources. I do not, either, see hnw it is possible to do it through our rail­ways. I do not know whether a lower or a higher rate of tariff on the railways would do most to increase the revenue from that source. I do not believe either would do it, as I suppose our railways are now employed to the full extent which the necessities of the country at present require. It is almost hopeless to look for in­creased revenue from our railways so long as there is not more produce sent from the country to the railway centres for export to other countries. Except the produce from the stations -wool-there is hardly any, at all events there is not sufficient, farm produce sent to supply the wants of Brisbane, which have often to be sup­plied by other colonies. I cannot, therefore, believe that putting on a higher tariff on the railways would increase the income to any extent. There is one source which the hon. gentleman mentioned from which I think some revenue might be received, and that is the land. The hon. gentleman alluded to the Acts of 1868 and 1876, and spoke of a Land Act based on some of the lines on which those Acts were

based as calculated to give us a larger revenue• and at the same time would settle people upon the land. I think we have rather neglected the settlement of people upon the land lately, and I believe we have neglected the income to be derived from the public estate by their settlement upon it. I suppose the hon. gentleman Hpoke of the selecting clauses of those Acts of 1868 and 1876, but if even such Acts were in force now it would take a very long time beJiore they could have any influence at all npon the affairs of the country. It must be remembered that these Acts allowed people to select under deferred payments. When the Act of 18G8 was pa,oed, the people were hungry for land which had been kept from them ever since Queensland had been a colony, and when, suddenly, they were allowed to go and select land where it suited them, at a price which enabled them to make a living upon it, there was a great ruoh for land. But even in the first year after the passing of the Act there was no great additi<m to the receipt' in the Treasury. Only a small portion of the purchase money came in in tbtl first year; but as selections grew dur­ing the second, third, fourth, fifth, and up to the ninth year, there was a very large sum derived from this s"urce. It was only when the ninth year came, when those who had first selected had paid the full Yalue of the land and had cea~ed their payments, that the normal selection of country began to keep up the stan­darcl of payment as it were year by year. But are we to wait five or six years until such another boom in land selection takes place to help us out of our difficulties? I say, Sir, that if the Land Acts of 1868 and 1876 were 1 •ut in force to-day they would produce no appreciable effect on the Treasury. It would take five or six years before the accumulated selections under deferred payments would produce any real]y appreciable return of income to the Treasury, and I again ask, are we prepared to wait that period? I consider, Sir, that this is a real crisis in the history of Queensland, and a crisis"" hich if not at once dealt with well and settled will bring about a state of affairs of which we have no conception. I<'or myself, I hope I may liYe long enough to see a really good La.nd Act in Queensland. I am not so strongly opposed to some portions of the present Act as some of my friends on this side of the House are. That part of it which enables large runs out west to be cut up into grazing farms has my hearty approval. I often talked the matter uver many years ago with my friends, but I did not get much help from them; and when in 1869 the Lilley Government introduced the Pastoral Leases Bill, which ultimatelY became the Act of 1869, I strongly advocated that the Crown should grant leases for such portions of the runs as were not required for public purposes, but that they should have power to resume the parts not under lease when­ever required. Therefore, when the Act of 1884 \Yas brought in that provision was not new to me, although no doubt it was new to the hon. gentle­men sitting on the other side of the House. That is a part of the Act I should never like to see repealed, although I know that in speaking thus I differ very considerably from many hon. gentlemen sitting alongside of me. If those powers of dealing with the western lands, together with the best portions of the Acts of 1868 and 1876, were united and em bodied in one measure, then probably our difficulties in raising revenue would have ceased. But at present we are working as it were in the dark. \Ve cannot tell when our troubles will cease unless we make some such provision as that pro­posed by the Government. I believe that if the best portions of the Acts I have referred to were framed into a Bill it would, at all events, carry us

464 Ways and Means, [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

over any such difficulties as we are suffering from. But, as everyone knows, to bring a Land Bill into this House and pass it, you must devote the whole session to it. I know a little about Land Bills. I have seen several passed through this House, and I know from experi­ence that the whole of a session must be devoted to the work of carrying a Land Bill through ; and any Government which carries a good Act through will have undoubtedly done a good piece of work. But, Sir, are we going to spend the whole session in trying-I will not say doing, because I do not know what the action of hon. members opposite might be ; possibly they would resort to all sorts of tactics for the purpose of defeating any amendment in the .Act of 1884-I say are we going to spend the whole session in trying to pass a Land Bill, when we are called upon to meet an emergency such as Queensland has never before suffered from? To think of such a thing in the present con­dition of ' affairs would be, in my opinion, an act of lunacy. It is all very well to say we shall ultimately get over the difficulty, but our difficulty is a present difficulty. The hon. member for North Brisbane, Sir T. Mcilwraith, talked a good deal about the pledges that have been made that no land tax would be imposed, but as far as I am personally con­cerned that has nothing whatever to do with this question. I never said a land tax would not be imposed. Althouf(h I was a supporter of that hon. gentleman I could have no influence in formulating any scheme of taxation. I certainly never mentioned a land tax, but I said that although a freetrader I felt bound to support the Hon. Sir T .. Mcilwraith in his Customs taxation, because it was absolutely necessary to raise revenue. ·I had therefore to support him, even though I believed the scheme was a mistake, because it is the duty of every country to pay its debts; and starting from that point, as I hope every other hon. member does, I had to forego my own opinions on the matter of the Customs duties, and support them rather than see our expenditure exceed our revenue. That is the position we are in now. Again, I see there is a difticulty in our position. We have not been able even with the assistance of the extra Customs duties to anything like meet what we are called upon to disburse. I need not repeat again the causes of our adversity, as they have been very properly placed before the House by the senior member for North Brisbane, Sir T. Mcilwraith, when he mentioned railways, Loan Bills, etc. I can only say that we are now in the same position in which we were when the Customs duti~s were increased for the purpose of enabling us to meet our liabilities, and we lllnst adopt a radical remedy to overcome the difficulty or we shall fail utterly in our duty to Queensland. It is all very well to say, as some hon, mem­bers have told us, that we have no right to impose such a tax as is now proposed without first submitting the question to the country. I admit that if there was a general election coming on shortly there would be something in that con­tention; but what we have to do now is to meet the difficulty that is staring us in the face, and to deal with the proposal made by the Treasurer in his Financial Statement. I was perfectly pre­pared, as in fact every Queenslander who has read the monthly returns of the Treasury must have been prepared, to learn that there was trouble ahead of us, and that some means must be devised to get out of the difficulty. We are in the same position as a country that has been suddenly attacked, and we have not time to do anything except to face our difficulty and defend ourselves.

Mr. HODGKINSON: You have had two years,

Mr. ARCHER : The matter is only brought prominently before us now, and we are trying all in our power to meet the difficulty into which we have been led by the late Government and bad seasons. I, for my part, would rather do any­thing to prevent us failing in our engagements and hearing Queensland quoted as a defaulter. In talking against the proposal of the Government, the hon. member for Wide Bay drew a strange picture, and quoted something to help us from the far and almost forgotten pa,st. I would like to put it to the House whether we are at all likely to be assisted by such quotations. The hon. member cited some ancient author-he mentioned his name, I believe-of nearly four hundred years ago, and advised us not to resort to a schen.e which had then proved a failure. That seems to me so absurd that it is really painful to discuss it. Suppose the hon. mem­ber, who is no doubt an ornament to the pro­fession t0 which he belongs, found some diffi­culty in settling some claim in Queensland at the present time-suppose he found it difficult to deal with the point by the ordinary process of law, would he be prepared, in order to settle the matter, to bring in the old system of trial by combat? That is about the same kind of argu­ment as was used hy the hon. member. "Why not take the two clients, and give them clubs or other weapons, and lee them battle with one another and settle the matter in that way? That is how such things were done even lees than 400 years ago. I do not know when the last trial by combat took place, but I know that such trials took place in France and :England during the reign of Henry VIII. I say that to carry us back to laws which suited the people of 400 years ago, is as ab•urd as to revert to a schenJe of taxation which may have suited at a period 400 years gone by. It is unreasonable to propose that we should be guided by views held centuries ago. We know perfectly well that the present state of society is highly complex, if not highly civilised-people call themselves highly civilised, but I have my doubts about that-and we can undoubtedly administer laws now that it would have been utterly impossible to administer during the age to which the hon. member alluded. Therefore I do not now want to discuss the quotations he made from those ancient authors. I simply say it is absolutely useless to look to them for anything to guide us. The things that can guide us are things that arfj near and present.

Mr. TOZER: That is what I quoted; not ancient authors.

Mr. ARCHER: Will the hon. member wait a little until I am finished. I shonld have thought from the experience which the hon. member has had that he would have had a little patience. I was going to allude to what he quoted from some statesmen of South Australia-! suppose that is what the hon. member refers to-and I was going to say at the same time that I pay far more attention to what the men of to-day in South Australia, who will not be known lOO years hence, think than to what was said by ancient authors. I believe that the gentlemen quoted by the hon. member are something like the hon. member and other members in this House. I do not suppose they are very prominent members of society, but have devoted themselves to the questions of the day, and with their limited ability, or great ability, have done their best to find some means out of the diffi­culty or trouble into which the country has got. Therefore, I give far more attention to what he quoted from the speeches of those men, who are our contemporaries, than I do to the opinions of men of hundreds or thousands of years ago. But though I wonld not put myself on a level

Ways and Means. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and Means. 465

with those men, I have my own opinione, and am not going to give then1 np for them or anyt1ue Pl~e. I have thonght out the matter for myself, aml I lmve arrived at the same opinion a-< the gentleman from whom I previously rJuoted-namely, that a property tax is " tax to bs avoided if yon cnn, and I am perfectly prepatYi to vote against a property tax when ftnyone can Rhow tne a better means of rai--ing the rc>\·enue req 11ired t') u1ect our expenditure. It is not a queHtion of feeling or opinion with which we hm·e t" cleal. \Ye are now facing- a matter of fact which ha.s to be dealt \vitb, and nnles:-; Ron1e better n1er1ni::i i:-:; .shown n1e of obtaining the ncc:e.:-\-.:a,ry incorne, I shall supp:Jrt the propo,.;al of the Government. I do not believe that <tny member ou the Op]""i­tion side has <-tny lJetter means of rneeting our liabilitwR, and prtn en tin~ us f<tlling into di~gTace by dishonouring our bill~, and so lm1g as no better means are sugg-e-;ted, I shall support the tax proposed by the Government. Of course whon you read a lea.fling article YOU do not ~ee the name of the writer, anc\ you think from the way in which he lays down the law that he must be a very great f.ellow. ]'or that re tson articles that are unsigned have enornwus influence; bnt if they were signed they would be thought no n1nre of than the opinions \Ve exvress oursel ve.:;, I think I am just '>S capn.ble of considering and coming to a conc1 ut~ion as to the nece~~ities of Queensland, anrl the proper means of meeting tho.se necessities, as any leader~ writer I ever knew. I will say nothing about those I do not know. The hon. member for \Vide Bay was kind enough to :-;how rue a report of the Colonial Treasurer of New Zeabud six or seven years old, in which he stated tlmt he was most anxious to remove the property tax if possible, because it was a 1nost obnoxionR tax. I know no tax that is not obnoxious. But he stated in his report that he could not see his way to remove it, or to enforce any other tax "that would fulfil the purposes for which that tax waB imposed-namely, to supply the necessities of the Treasury. If I pay more dderence to the opinion of the Colonial Treasurer of New Zealand than to the opinion of " man wlw wrote hundreds of years ag(~, I like\vise pay deference to the men who have lminit'tered this tax in New Zealand, ancl have beJn ab!e to judge how it answers the purpose for which it was imposed. Therefore, I take the liberty of repeating the opinion of the Colonial Treasurer in New Zealand, who says :-

" 'fhe Governn1cnt have had under their careful ron­sidenttion during the reces~ the que ,,tion of the incidcnre of the property tax. The strong antag;onism \Vhich seems to be felt ngainst the tax in some important districts of the colonv woul<l alone have demaHdvl an exhaustive reconsidci·rttion of the snbjcr.t, anil sueh a reconsideration the Govermncnt have g'iveP the matter, but, [ regtet to say, without seeing their wa.r to reduce, mn<'h less to abandon, the tax in the prC'sent state of our financC's; our present nece~sitics making it impossible for us to forego any appreciable part of the snm now rai~ed. 'l'hat snm, it mn~t he remembered, is estimated at no lrss than £335.00) for the present year; and the practicnl impo:-:sibility of obtaining anything like that auwunt from property in anything like a" equitable a 1vay, anrl the great diversity of opinion amongst the memhers of the present Parliament, as shown in the dist;nssion npon the amendments of the Act proposed by the Govern­ment, render it unlikely tlutt it ean be satisfa,:>.torily dealt with during the present scs8ion." That is, the people that have had the experience of the tax and seen all its disad va>Jtages as well as its advantages, are far too high-minded to risk the chance of net being able to meet their liahilities. They will persevere with the LftX

whatever may be said against it mther thttn fincl themselves in a predicament of that kind. Does anybody suppose that one tax is more pleaqmt than another when it comes to be looked into?

1890-2 Q

No doubt taxes through Customs appear to be less unpleasant thftn others, because you do not see at the time you are buying gnods how much you are paving in the shape of taxes. But the greatest financiers in Great Britain have said that that is the very worst part of the tax; that nobody knows what he is paying, and therefore nobody re,.;ists it ; and that the very best taxes are tho~e which are most disliked, because people will see thllt no more is raised than is absolutely neces,ary. And the very fact that the tax in N"tcw Ze:tlancl is disliked is the hest feature in the tax. It i.-< that which makes it certain that the people there have taken a lesson frmn the previous rnismn,nagemPnt, and will 1 ake care that they are not brought into the same condition a.g<tin bv the same means. It has beeu said that this tax will do a great deal of hann. Of cnllr'-e it will make people jJOorer to the extent of the tax; but I do not see how the Government are to g-et money unless they get it out of our pockets. The meeting- held last nio-ht in Brisbnne shows that some gentle­m~n there were unwilling to suffer in ]JOcket for the geneml good. I must confess tbrtt I would mther see a surplus so that there would be no neces,ity for taxation ; but I say it is the part of a good citizen, whatever may be the cause of the deficiency-whether it be bad mn,nagement or bad seasons-to rr.eet it, and see that our means are better administered in future. But the deficiency must be met ; and I know of nothing that will meet it better than the bx proposed. This tax will disappoint the Trr·,surer in one way. He hoped to put the tax on the mortg.<gee and not on the mortgagor, but he will be disappointed in that, except so far as present mortgages are concerned. \Vhen mort.l\"a::;ees lend their money again they will get the highest price they can for their money in the market. It is quite possible that money has already been removed from the colony­perhaps it is done for the sake of effect by some wealthv men. But those who remove their capitaffrorn Queensland will only help to accu­mulate money anrl reduce the value of money in the places to which they take it; and as soon as they fincl they can get j, per cent, more for their money in Queensland than in Victoria and the other colonies, they will bring it to Queens­L111d again. l\J oney, like all other goods, will find the place whertl it can best be sold-because lending money is selling it-and whatever capital may lrave Queensland in such times as these will s0on find its way back again. It has been said that this is a great hardship on those who have money. Of course it is. It is one of the hardship>< to which we have to submit when our expenditure has exceeded our income. Anyone who attempts to separate public life from private life makeR a mistake. 'l.'he same economic law governs the private individual who overspeuds. He will impoverish himself, and in the same way the State which overspends .will impoverish itself, and will have to pay the prper. \Ve have to po:~y the piper now for some things which never should have been done. I can fancy quite well that in a year or two, if this property tax is imposed, the Treasurer then in power will find himself in a nice cosy place, and particularly if the land law is altt<red so that the land shall produce not an exorbitant but an appreciable sum towards the gener.cl revenue of the State. Should this be the case we shall soon be rid of this deficit, and shall prohably again have a surplus. Then the Trea­snrer will most likely be callPd upon to remove this tax, which I ttdrnit is a tax which does not commend itself to me in every way. I believe he woulcl be in a position to do this in a year or two if we had a proper land law. By that I do not mean a law by which the Government would be

466 Ways ancl Means. [ASSEMBLY.] TVays ancl JYieans.

empowered to sell large areas of the pnblic estate, but a bw which would enable us to fulfil the great duty, referred to by the hon. member for Korth Brisb,me, of settling people on our lanck In fact, a law which would cause a steady stream to enter the Treasury by means of selection. Thie t>1x is not one tlmt would commend itself to me so much as an income tax. I believe that an income t>1x is the birest tax which c:an he imposed, as it is so simple. The State should tax men for the protection it affords them for their property and their incomes, and that is the fairest of taxes. The only reason I can see why such a tax cannot be !m posed now is the almost im poHi hili ty of carrying 1t out. I cannot sec how it can he done. I have stated this privately-that if I HW any way in which an income tax could. be impo .ed in this colony, I undoubtedly would not consent to have a property tax, hut I d.u not see how it can be done. Aclmn Smith said that income was the proper thing for people to tax, hut then he was writing for a society which was old and well established, and at a time when Great Britain was alreacly the chief commercial country in the world, and when the pupulatinn was closely settled, and where it was ea'y for a few tax­collectors to perform the duties of collection. But we-with the scattered population we have, with the uncertaintv of the !•laces in which a

·man lives-could harcily have such a tax, and I do not see how I could commend the Government if they proposed an income tax. I beliBve in the present state of (~neensland an income tax is one which would defeat its own object. It might come very hard upon some people who would be obliged to pay, \Vhile an enorn1ous number of people would escape. \Vith a property tax, that is not to be so. There, at all events, tr;e property has a tangible form, and therefore I believe that by this property tax we will c1eal fairer with the whole of the community than by imposing an income tax which, in itself, i.-; the fairer tax of the two. The hon. member for Eiwggera said something which was very pertinent about the exemptions the Bill might inake. Of course it is a pity that we are now talking in the dark, but still the Bill cannot be introduced until the resolutions are carried. \Ve are labouring under a disability, but still that is the practice followed with all other Bills of the s~me kind. The h<m. member for Enoggera knew quite enough how­ev~r, to speak effectively upon the subject, ~nd he pomted ont that a great mcmy wealthy people would, under the Bill, escape-at least a Ltrge portion of their property would e,;capc the tax­their furniture, plate, and works of art. That is quite true, and I feel very strongly upon the matter. I am not one of those who have a house furnished eXJ>ensively, and I should like others to pay up. But the question is not simple, and it is not one which can be settled in an off-hand manner. It appears to me that the Government have thought over all the dif­ficulties in connection with this tax, an<l that they intend to act so as to prevent the tax becoming an annoyance. By cloiug so a great many wealthy people may escape; for, after all, it is only wealthy peoi>le who hcwe plate and works of art in their houses; Lut then the Government could not possibly make a special clause in the Bill to admit the valuators into the houses of the wealthy, and not admit them into the houses of the middle and working classex. I have not spoken to any member of the J\Iinistrynpon the sul>ject, hut I snppose it l1ceame a question with them: "\Ve have either to suffer a loss of revenue by not having the full amount paid by some people, or we shall have to make the tax so inquisitorial that it will become really a burden, and the means of distressing and annoying the people;" and they have come to the conclusion that it would be better to forego

the income from port of the property of these nry wealthy people, rather than make the tax more inquioitorial than is absolutely nece"sary. That is the only constructi<>n I can pnt upon it. If it is not 80, I can see no excu3e for it, becanse I believe the wealthier a man is the more he should p:ty; and altbough I would never consent to taxing works of art, if it rneant fine statuary or tine paint­ing"', things frmn which a person gains no money, a'ot.hetic thing' for the c11lti 1·ation of good taste; such things ae:o plate or furnltnre-, fm~ \vhich a person rnay at any tilne receive their lll'uper value, should he trc·nted differently. Still, I 011n under<land that there mav have been son1e he~ir2otion in taxing things ·which would require the tnx-g l_ther81' to vird~ every house. I do not think it was '':orthy of the strong coi1den1nation expressed by tbe hem. memlh r for Enoggera, bnt it is a CplPSti.on for cnn~ sidernti.ou, and one npon which l\Iinisters will, no doubt, he required to give full information when the Bill id bronght in. Howe\rer, as I ha\ e said, the point to be rernombered is that we are in deht, o.ncl we are called upon to pay that debt, and must pay it.. Others who look at us are of the same opinion, an cl, at all e1·cnts, the southern papers are of that opinion, I have not, eo far, troubled the House m l!Ch with qnotati,ns, but I shall take the liberty of reading something which appeared in the ,lJe/bow·ne Amus of 3ht July:-

"After the deprr -,-,ion of trade that has been cc .. used in Queensland by bad seasons, any increased taxation 'vhat~o ver is uatnrally unll dc~ome. hnt the property tax is likely to be cspecinll~r unpopular, bccan~r. unlike tl10 htnd tax, it falls not npou a ela~s lmt npon the community Tl1e hnldf>r of mining scrip and inve~t.­lllt'nt stocl(s and the ow1wr of lJOnscs in the ei 1 y WI1Uld be eomvelled to ('Ontrilmte to it as w Jl as tl1e landed proprie'!or. In thil:' tht oppr,nents of the Govmnment see tbdr adrnnl age. and Sir Thnma~ ".\1cUwranh and Sir Samuel (d'i:ttith hP3e app~n·eutly composed their dorp and long-standing differcnce.s to make' an as . ...:ault upon it. In face of such resistanc,;, J.'Iinis~ ters u:ay lmYe muc:h tronl)le oYer tllcir Budget :proposal~. 'rhcy have to struggle against a weak!Je~v; in their own camp in the shape of the disaffection arisiul.i among some of the Xortheru members. and they will have to w·n·d off a stl'Ol!uons opposition on the part of BHtn~· influential people 'vho 1vill re"ent the very idea of a property tax. But, IYlJatever the result may lJc. the problem 1,..;; one that must be faced. Queens­lm1d has borrowccl too rapiclly, and her revPnne is drainr t to pay 1ntcrest on the money. To s:tve the credit of the c0louy there is nothing to be done except to provide for the inter, -:-;t, even though this must in­volve increased t:_xation. And. whatever set of ::\Iinis·­ters may be in po\rer, the sanv-• nccc:~s.ity will remain."

The Hox. P. PEHKIKS: Who wrote that article?

Mr. ARCHER: I cannot tell you. Proba,'bly some stnpid fellow down in JUelbonrne.

The HoN. P. PERKI::"iS : It is worthless. It is a gutter article.

Mr. ARCHER: I am now going to give the opinion of a gentleman of greater tCLlents than I l'Os~ess. I shall quote fron1 Ronte rernarks rnade by the Hon. Sir S. vV. Griffith, as rep,rtec! in Hansco·d, vol. lii., page 2G2. This was in 1887, when he was going out of office. He says :-

"I have mentioned the tariff', nnd ha Ye explained that it is not dr,,iTable to alter that at the pres,_mt time, and I doubt very much whether a revision of the tanff ''rould give us ;t larger rm.~euue. I cannot say. I do not lJOssess the requisite kuowl- ~1ge to offer an opinion; it might or it mip:ht not do so. There areother:--ources; but, after alL the only other po5::;iblc source is dirE·r:t tn;:.-ation. Komc pCOJJlC appear to tllink that ihat is very horrible, but it exl~ts in nj arly every other conntry in the world; ancl I think the time has come when sneh tnxation shonld be ill1110sed. TlJ:~re are various fr·rms of direct ta-xation. and the one in England in most favour is an unt'air tax. I do n0t think that that wonld tc convenient to collect or assess here, and I thiuk tl1is ye!.!r in 11articnlar \Yonlcl be a pa.rtieu­lal'ly ba:l year t.o impo~c such a tax, becanse the incomes are ahvn.ys estimate(} acco.,.ding to the average incrca~e of the p;,_st three YL'ars, antl certainly the last

Ways and Means. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and Means. 467

two years would not be favournblc yrars to go upon. For myself I should like to see a gl:ncral property tax ; that would be an extreme!~· fair tax, 1mt in this eolony it would be extremely t1iffienlt to manage. It would be very difficult to rnnke the neccs~mry asse;.::sments, and would c0st a great deal to \,·ork." I agree with the hnn. gentleman that a general property tax would he difficult to manage ; hut we see he is of opinion that it would be "an ex­tremely fair tax."

Mr. TOZI£R: Nobody ohjects to a tax on property.

Mr. ARCHER : Seeing that is the opinion of one of the learling- members of this Hom.e, aud the leader of the Opp<>siti<>n, I tl1ink wp l!lay take heart of grace, and consider "·e shall not be doing so badly in following w admiraule an example. It will be difficult of assess1nent, no doubt, and it is always difticult to take m<>ney out of people' El Jlockets, but that Ulnst he overctmle. Difficult as it will be, it will n<>t be• half as diffcnlt as the hnposition and collection of ~Ln inf'Ollle ta.x, and it will have the ad vant>tge, as the M ell >oume man whom the hon. melllher for Cambooya knows so much abont points ont, th>tt it would be spread over a larg,er number than wonld he affected by a land tax. It will likewi"' have a further advantage, in that it will give a far larger revenue, and if to that re1.·enue ·were added the revenue which might be deriVf'd fr<>m the operation of a liberal mu! well-thoug·ht.out Land Act, I believe that in three or four yearc< from ne>w Queensland woul<l be in the proud position of lw .. \-iPg evPry year a revPnue lar"-!er than ber expenditure. That is a gr<:>at ol1jt->tt t~~ be looked to. I lwlieve it, iR an object \l'ithin our reacb ; bot if we think it within om reach with­out taxing onr::o:;el ve!-', we are very nmch mi,..,takPn, \Vhat are we looking for now? \Vbat wa' the meaninf4 of that 1flel'ting in Brisbane last 11ight? \Vhat are we thinking- of'? It is to try and make up the revenue without taking money out nf our own pockets. \V e want the nHmey ; we want the taxes, but nobody wants to pay them. Everybnrly wants to shift the burden on to somebody ehe's shoulders. The man who discnvm·s the secret how to do that \Vill, of C1lurse, relieve us of our difficultie~; but he has not discovered it yet, and '"' he is n<>t likely to di,co,-er it during the time I livP, I am going, very much against the grain, to consent to be taxed like other people. There is no other way ont of the ditficulty. If we consent to this proposal, I feel confident that in a few years Queensland will be over all her clit!icnlties, and more, that she will m:1ke a stanrl amol!g the Australian colonies that we shall be proud of. If, on the other hand, she does not consent to be tr~xed so as to meet her liabilities, we shall c,tink in the no,trils of the people at home, and deservedly so. I consider th:tt if fl country like Queensland, that has borrowc d so much, that has been trusted as she has by the capitalists at home, will not make an effmt to meet her liabilities, a pen should be struck through her Constitution Act. I hope therefore that these resolutions will pass; that the Dill founded upon them will pass, and that as long as I live I shall always find Queensland among those countries that are willing to pay their debts.

Mr. OOWLEY said : Mr. S!Jeaker,-The question we have to con8ider is one of very great interest to the colony as a whole and to the por­tion of the community I represent. It is also a subject upon which hon. members like to make long speeches, but I slmll try as shortly as possible to give pntctical illnstrations of how these proposals will affect the constituency I represent. The Treawrcr has told us that there is a great deficiency; he has also told us the causes of that deficiency, th<l

three principal ones being the great loss in the \vorking of our railways, lm:;s of revenue frorn pu hlic htnds, and the increase in the endowment to divisional board;. I think we ought to de>tl with those causes, an<l try and find some remedy for the disc·ases which 'be tells us exist. His prnpo:-;al;, are, first, to increase the duties on spil-its and beer ami the excise duty on spirits mannfactured in the colony. In this I qni~e agree with him. I believe that these are fa1r and legit.itr,ate subjects for taxation. If by increasing- this forrn of taxation we can induce men to drink le;s of those articles, we shall do an irrnnPnse amount of good, anct if they still drink the same quantity as before, we shall derive benefit fr,,m it, anrl those who partake of them li'ill have to pay the p<"n··tlty. As regards tbe prnposl'd propert;1' tax, I canno! say that I a• I mire it or thnt I can support 1t, because I believe it will he very injnrinus to the conntrv at la rgt', and also tu the bulk of the people who live in the country rlis­tricts. I think at the present time we cannot stand further tax·1tion, OJ' if we have to stand it, we c~n do so only to a very limited. degree, and not in the wholeB,t!e form whiCh the TrPfl·.urer's proposal' indicate. I think if those propo>als are carried ont in the form in which thev are now submitted-of course, I know nothing at the present time of any exemptions· which the Treasmer will make, therefore I rleal with the propo<als as t.he:y are brought b:'fore us-I srw if they are earned out there w1ll he a great ·dc':tl more money colleded than the Trectsurer himself imagines, and the people will be taxed, to a degree they will be unable to h>mr. I di<agrt>e with the proposal too, became, unJe,~s an~· thing arise~ to the contrary, friendly societies will be t'txed. There are a large num­ber of men in this community who are saving their mane'' and who are members of friendly Sl•cieties fo; the express purpose of putting by a little to help them in times of distress, anrl to tax those people would be very unfair and unjust. Another reason "by I object to the prOJH'rty tax is 'that it will ultimately fall almost entirely upon the owners of real estate -on risible property-and those people ~ho have not visible property will escape. I J;e]1ev.e in that respect it will be almost as mtqm­tous as a htnd tax pure and simple. People who live in the country will be taxed because their property is visible, while those who live in towns and other large centres of popu­lntion will not. vVith owners of stations, plantations, and selections, the only object is to increase their flocks and herds or the area of their cultivation, and to beautify their home­st·ads in a pennanent way. Therefore, all the money they obtain is .gen~ral~Y. reinvested in their own property whtch 1s VISible to the tax-gatherer, and they cannot evade the t':'x. :Cut on the other hand, people who der1ve benefit from the Government of the colony and from public expenditure, may. invest their cr~pital outside the colony, or m such a manner as to evade the tax-gatherer. Country people cannot 'do this. In fact, they do not wish to do it. Their object io 'simply to increase ·their holdingR. If a man has 500 cattle he wants to get 1,000, or to increase the area be has under cultivation. Therefore, if the proposed property tax is c:arried, I am convinced that the country people w1l] have to bear the brunt of it, while those who mve~t their money in other w>tys will escape, because 1t has been clearly shown by the hon. member for Rnckhampton, l\Lr. Archer, that the people who bormw mangy will be saddled. with the extra taxation while the lender w1ll escape. I mu~t say tb~t the Ministry have acted m?st fairly in their proposals. They have not trted

468 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

to shield their supporters in one way or another. By the last return under the Brands Act, issued by the Inspector of Stock, I find that there are 13,700,000 sheep in the colony, and nearly 5, 000,000 cattle. This Government is generally looked upon a.s one that is supported by squatters and capitalists, and yet this tax will fall directly upon them, because every head of sheep and c·,ttle will be liable to taxation, ancl it will be impossible for them to evade the tax-gatherer. The tax that will be collected on sheep and cattle, without including horses, will amount to about £G5,000. And that is sufficient, I think, without including the land or improvements, to prove the bona .fides of the ;yiinistry in bringing in this tax to tax the capitalist ancl to tax all alike.

Mr. MURPHY; The capitalists do not like it.

JYir. TOZER: 'rhey do in Xcw Zealand, and keep it up.

Mr. COWLEY: I do not wish to go to New Zealand or anvwhere else. I wish to deal with this Cjuestion i;1 a practical manner, and see how the proposed tax will affect the people of this colony. But I must say in passing that I believe the ::Vlinistry have acted fairly and honestly and to the best of their ability in bringing in this taxation scheme. I alw disagree with this tax because it will be a very great check to the ad,·ance of Northern Queensland. The people of Northern Queenslanrl, as a rule, have not very much capital, but are large borrowers. They are pioneers, and have to go out into the wilds of the country to subdue them; their lives are often in clanger, and they have to brave floorls and an inclement climate. If a reo.triction is placed on capital it will be a very great blow to all the industries of Northern Queensland, and for that reason I car,not support the pro­posal as brought down by the Treasurer. I know that many people fail to grasp the meaning of this tax, and many think that country people will not he hxed to the same extent as towns­people. Last :Friday morning there was a leading article in the leading paper of this colony-the Brisbane Cmt?·ier.

Mr. MURPHY : Query. Mr. CO\VLEY: That is my opinion. I con­

sider that the Couriu will compare favourably with any paper in Australia, and that it is the leading paper in Queensland. Therefore I wish to draw attention to the article referred to, which I consider is of a misleadin;; character, and one calculated to mislead country residents. The writer makes the mistake of assuming that the propos:tl of the Treasurer will be a tax on the annuaJ mlue of property as fixed by the local authorities and not on the capital value. In illustration of his argument he states that a Queen street property worth £23,000 will be taxed to the extent of £77 per annum, whereas, if I understand the proposal of the Treasnrer, a tax of 1d. in the £1 on £23,000 less £1500 will amount to £09 15s. So that the writer falls into an error there in dealing with town pro­pert''· But he falls into a greater error when dealing with suburban anrl conntry properties which, he argues, will not be burdened in the same proportion, h1s mistake being that he calculates the tax on the annual instead of the capital value. He states that a property of the value of £3,500 in a suburban district will be taxed to the amount of £14 3s. 4d., but that a property of the same value in a country district, just outside the suburbs and in some division, would only have to pay £3 15s. I contend that in each instance, allowing for the £500 exemption, a tax of 1d. in the £1 will amount to £12 10s., so that the article is misleading-, and that is the reason why I have drawn attention to it, because there

are hunrlreC!s, perhaps thonPanrls, of people who read the p ··per without carefully examining the statements that are mar1e. It wou!tl be very nli:-:leading indeed to country l'Psidents tn allow them to believe that when the tax­gatherer goes rnnlld they will not have to pay as n1uch relnt.ive1y as the o\YuerR of t<nvn and suburban properties. Another reason whv I refer to this matter i<, that at the meeting last night in the Centennial Hall an able man and a late member of this House commented upon the artielf·, s.nd, ado11ting its stat(-InentR aH correct, Sj,]d the TreaRurer knew nothing at all about how the incidence of his proposal would fall, and that country peOJ>Ie would nearly escape, whenas town and sulmrlmn people would have to pay to a very gTeat extent. I beJie,·e the Trea­surer inten<!s that this tax slwnld fall on all alike, and on the eapital values of all properties; tberefure every man in the country would have to pay at the same ute as the residents of towns on the capital value of his property over and above the first £300. A great deal has been said in thio discussion about remedies for the present difficulty, and I think it is only fair that members who object to this tax shonlrl state what, in their opinion, would be a fair substitnte for it. I believe that one remedy is in selling more of our country lands, and that is a com·se in which I wonld support tr.e Government. It is'' ell known that we have many millions of acres of land which would sell rcadilv at a fair price, provided terms were given to the pur­chasers. I lately saw a c·tblegram from the old country stating that land in \Vestern Australia realised Ds. per acre, and if lnnd in the wilds of vVestern Australia reali.sed !Js. per acre we m:iy fairly conclude that our lands would realise considerablv more, hecause they are well known, are more easily accessible, and purchasers of them would have the benefit of rail way communication, of settlement, postal and telegraphic communication, and harhours and rivers to convcv their procluce away when once it had reached the coast. Therefore I think we may fairly assume that our lands would readily sell at 10s. an acre, and in all probability a great deal more. \Vhat i3 the nse of locking all this land up on leases in 20,000-acre blocks at l:f,,d. per acre? ·By selling them at 10s. per acre' that would give, at 5 per cent., 6d. an acre per annum in perpetuity.

An HoxouRAllLE l\IE;I!BER: They would not fetch 5s.

:Mr. CO\VLEY : Try, and see. A gentleman told me the other day that he had made an offer to the Go,·ernment to purchase 50,000 acres of land at 10s. per acre, and that offer was sub­mitted to the Land Board, but they would not accept 10s. They asked 15s., which the man declined to give. Here is one man who offered £2:"5,000 for 50,000 acres; and I have since been told by another gentleman that he was prepared to buv 50,000 or 100,000 acres at 10s. an acre pro­vided. he was allowed reesonable terms. I believe that if the Government decided on selling country lands, and the fact were made known, capitali·,tsin the southern colonies would gladly avail them­selves of the opportunity and come to (~ueens­land and purchase land. "'\nrl if no more than 10s. an acre were realiserl, the Government wonld derive an amount equivalent to 6d. per acre per annum from the land, whereas now they only get 1~\d. per acre. And here I will refer to the (iuestion of railways. Is it fair to ask a limited community to pay the whole cost of our railways where we have a very large landed estate "lyin,:: almost useless? I think the remedy is here. If we sell land judiciou.,ly, and take care to get not less than 10s. an acre for it, we should be able to pay the interest on the

Ways and Means. [5 AuGusT.] Ways and Means. 469

cost of our lines, and in a great measure pay for the construction of new line>:, It is useless to say that the bnd will not be put to a good purpose wben it is purchased. People will not buy land un]e,s they can make money out of it; and having purchased it they will inrluce settlement, increccse their flocks and herds, and make their land productive; and the whole community will be benefited. There are several other things that could be done to get rid of the de­ficiency ; and I agree in a great measure with the propositions suggested by the hon. member for 'roowoomba, ::\fr. Groom. I believe we should look ronnel and see if we could not retrench. Every individual who has a large proverty to manage must retrench in hard times; and I think it should be the same with the Govern­ment. Therefore, I re~tlly think we should set a good example, as suggested by the hon. member for rroowoomba, and forego our annual salaries of £300. There is no use in di;;guising the fact that we are drawing <ll'er £21,000 per annum, which the country can ill afford to pay. .Men reJ•re­sented constituencies here for many years without any pay at all, and we might very justly go back to that state of things and do the work we have to do for the honour attached to it, and for a pure svirit of patriotism. There is no reason why we should not forego the payn1ent of our salarie ;, and show the Ci vi! servants that we, at any mte, do not preach what we are not prepared to practice. I would support the Go­vernment in any proposal of this nature. I do not say that I would go the length of abolishing the Defence Force. A large amount of money h:<s been spent on . torpedoes, guns, and stores, and these must be protected. At the s~tme time I think that a very great saving may be effected in this quarter, and that rnoreencouragmnentought to be given to volunteers and rifle clubs through­out the colony. 'l'he commandant is very much opposed to rifle clubs; but if they were treated fairly and encouraged, clubs would be formed all over the colony where enough men could be got together; and these men who can ride and shoot well would do Yaluable service in defend­ing tbe centres of population when called upon. But so long as their etiorts are slighted at head-quarters, so long will they hold back. I also agree with the hon. member for Too­woomba in thinking that retrenchment should not stop at this House, but that ~tl! mernberB of the Civil Service drawing over £400 per annum should submit to a reduction of 10 per cent. till times improve. I think we can fairly reduce their sabries to that extent, because many of them have been a long ti1ne in the .:;ervice, during which time they have saved and invPsted money; and if they do not like to acc-pt the reduction they can go out-there is nothing to compel them to remain. I also think that an income tax would be much fait·er than either a property tax or a land tax, and we should turn our nttention in that direction. The members on this side who have spoken in favour of an income tax have said that one great objection is the cost of collection. I do not know that the cost of collection would be very great, but I think we might fairly give it a trial, because it would be better to get at the men who have income tlHm take it out of men who have nothing beyon<l the necessaries of life and the means to nmke a lidng. The faire:st tax is a tax on incon18 oYer and above what will provide the common necessaries of life. There should also be a revi,;ion of thf' tariff, and many of the obnoxious duties which at present par~tlyse industry should be taken off. The additional to,xation imvosed some timR ago ha,s not brought in revenue to the ex­tent anticipated. lt camp, at an inopportune time when people were suffering from droughts :.;nd floods, and people have suffered a great

deal from the excessive taxation through Cus­toms, and in many instant-A>' the progress of the country has been retarded on that account. I think that a freetrade policy would do more to encourage the natural industries of the colony. I do not see why we should endeavour to foster artificial industries in the towns. I sny it would develop the natural industries in the country districts which are now retarded by the ob­noxious duties we have to pay. And even if the artificial industries in the towns were to suffer, it would still be better to encourage the development of our natnml industries, by which we shall derive more lasting good than by bolstering up artificial industries, and drawing- large population to the towns of the colony. I am satisfied that if we had a Trea­surer able to grasp the position, and bold enough to bring in freetrade measures-and if they were carried--the colony would derive more good from th"t remedy than from any other. There is one other remedy worthy of the attention of the House, and that is the withdrawal of the subsidies hom the divisional boards and the municipalities. Last year when the hon. member for Logan brought in a resolution in favour of the extension of the subsidy, I supported it; but at that time I was not a ware of the consequences ; and I feel sure that had the position been placed fairly before the country boards they would rather abandon their subsidy than submit to the pro­perty t«x. It has been stated in this House that the homestead selector will not suffer under the property tax ; but there are homestead selectors and homestead selectors. I do not know much about those in the South, but I cl<tim to know a great deal about homestead selectors in the Korth, especially those in my own district, with whom I come into contact daily. One reawn I have for suggesting the withdraw<tl of the subsidy is that it woulcl be better for the residents of the country districts to pay the endow­ment of £2 for £1 than to pay the property tax­th~tt they will actually be the gainers in many instclnces by taxing themselYes to the full extent of the pre-:ent tax, with the endowment added, rather than submit to the property tax. The instances which I shall now give are all facts drawn from my own ~-.;perience, s0 that I can say that they are truthfully drawn and that they are not imaginary. I know many selectors who have 160 acres of land in the Northern portion of the colony, and that land is worth £3 per acn·, or a capital value of £480. Now, the divisional boards arrive at their annual valuation on that land by taking 5 per cent. on the c>epital Yalue, which makes the annual value £:l4. The rate struck is ls. in the£1-at lea:;t, that i'the m~'<imurn the dh-isional boar-Js can charge-and therefore, they have to pay annually, a divisional board r~tte of £1 4s. \Ve will see what they would have to pay under the proposed property tax, as under the proposals all their real and personal property is to be taxed with the one exemption of £500. As I said before, the land is worth £480- that is the unimproved vctlue-the improvements on the property-build­ingR, draining, fencing, clearing, and stumping­amount to £U50. 'rhe crop, say of fifty acres of 'ugar-cane "t £10 an acre, is worth £500; the horses, drays, and implements, at a very low estimation are worth £100; the furniture and personal effects also, at another low estimate, are worth £100; making a total capital of £1,830. Deducting the £500 which the Trea­surer proposes to exempt, it leaves a balance of £1,330, and, at 1d. in the £1, the tax will amount to £5 lOs. 10d. Add to this the divisional board mte of !::1 4c., and we find the total tax the home stead selector will have to pay is £614s. 1 OJ. Now, the contribution. as I said before, to the central Government will be £5 10s. lOd., and he will

470 Ways anq Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

get in exchange £2 Ss., in the shape of endowment to the divisional hoard. If the homestead selector will pay his rate of £1 4s. and the £2 Ss. which the Government pay in endowment­making a total of £3 12s., he will he in pocket £3 2s. 10d. For that reason, I say that if the matter were clearly placed before the homestead selectors, they would rather forego the divisional hoard endowment, and depend entirely on their own resources than pay this property tax, for they will have no control over it. They would not be sensible men if they did not eee it in the light in which I now put it. The man would save £3 2s. 10d., and would have full control of his own taxation. Then there is another thing. When these men have to pay more to the divisional hoards, the hoards will be more careful in their expenditure, and there will he no large amounts lying to their credit in the hanks at fixed deposit. There will he no useless works carried out, and they will combine to do the work economically and to the hest ad vantage for their own pockets, and that is the only way to get at them. Let us put onrselves in the place of these homestead selectors for a little w bile. Their property has not been left to them by some generous individual, but thev have obtained their present measnre of prosperity after many years of hard life, and after paying very con­siderably in the shape of ruined constitutione. These men are not the men they once were. They cannot meetthehardshipstheyonce had to endure. They have gained their present position not only at the expense of their own physical constiln­tions, but they have gained it by the assistance of their wives and children in many instances, and I ask would it he fair at the present time, when the:oe men are suffering from years of very great depression, to put this additional taxation on them ? If we do, then I feel assured that many of them will hav8 to give in, and we shall lose a valuable class of settlers. 'rhey will either go to the towns or else to some other place, as they will not he able to stand it. This illustration is drawn from actual facts; but it is not all the property of the man, because he has mortgage<! it to a considemhle extent, and he has this 1110rtgage to pay off. I know that the man has fallen behind in his payments lately, and he is at the mercy of the mortgagee, who has had to extend the date at which he will have to pay the intere,t. Another way I Io,,k at it is thi,; : In the case of these home~ stead selectors they have to pay a far greater rate of interest on the mmH·y they borrow than people in towns. There are very few selectors in the north of Queensland who can borrow money under 10 per cent., so that they have to make thi,; 10 per cent. for the man who lends them money; and it is only by hard work and strict economy and frugality that they can get enough to meet their annual expenditure and pay interest and by by a little to wipe off the mortgage. Therefore I think that if this property tax is imposed as proposed by the Colonial Treasurer-I do not know what the exemptions are to be-but if it is to he as stated by the Treasurer, I can see nothing hut ruin for hundreds of the most honest and hard­working men in the colony, who have spent the best portion of their Ii ves in developing the North of Queensland. Now, I shall take the case of a small grazier, and shnw how the tax will fall upon him. He has 5,120 acres of land, for which he pays 15,-. per acre, and I presume he will not be taxed below that. This, then, will be the capital value of his land, a;; he will not say it is worth less, because he will be damaging the selling price if he did, and I do not think it is fa1r to put it at less than he paid the Government for it, althongh, by the action of the late Ministry in leasing large

acres at 11,\,d. they have reduced the value of such property very considerably. l'viany a man whc> has started in a small way has been ruined, or next door to it, through the la,rge grazing farmers who are only paying a little over 1d. per acre for their bnd. VI/ell, this man I have taken is actually paying ls. 6d., because he is paying 10 per cent. ou his capital value, and the interest on 15s. at 10 per cent. cvmes to 1s. 6d. per acre. His land, we shall say, is worth £3,840. Now, the annual value for divisional lJOard ratinp: purposes is o:Cl92, and the mte on that at 5 per cent. is £D 12s. But the property tax on £3,840-the value of the land alon8-will be £1G; on the improvements-at the very least 10s. per acre, berause he could not get his title deeds unless he had spent 10s. an acre-£2,500, and the tax on that would be £10 13,;. 4d. Then take 100 head of horses, worth £10 each-£1,000-the tax on that would be £4 3s. 4cl; on 1,000 head of cattle at £2-£2,000-the tax would be £8 Gs. Sd; making a totr,l tax of £3() 13s. 4d. Add to this £9 12s., the amount of the divisional hoard rates, and it makes a total of £~Hl 5s. 4d. Now, his contribu­tion to the central Government is £39 13s. 4d., and the £2 for £1 endowment will be £19 4s., so that the Govermuent will actually make a profit of ,nn 19s. 4c1. out of this small holding. I think that when the divisional board ratepayers come to see this they will certainly object to the tax as proposed, and they will prefer to abandon the endowment and go on their own payments. In taking into consider:.tion this man's case we must remember the loss under which he already labours through the existing legislation. The great curse to settlement in this colony has been pernicious legislation. The Land Act of 188 l has decreased the value of the land in all those properties which were bought for 10s. and 15s. an acre, because there are hundreds of thousands of acres in the Northern por­tion of this colony which hav·e been taken up simply for grazi;1g purposes, and they were t,;ken up under the belief that any legislation would tend to make land more difficult to obtain, and would tend to raise the price, and not lower it. But under the Land Act of 1884 large grazing faru1s can be rPnted at a little over 1d. per acre, and the men I hav·e referred to can­not compete in the market, simr,ly because their land stands them in at le,tst 1s. an acre per annum, and they cannot coml'ete with those who have bken up bnd under the Act of 1884. I say that if you put ad<litional taxation upon these men, you will dJ'ive them out and simply hand them over into the hands of the large squatters and grrrziers. Now, I will give you another illustration in the C;lSe of that much ill.used man, the planter. No one can deny that the planter lms snffered equally with the grazier and h«mestead selector in the past, or that this tax will hear heavier upon him than upon any other me m her of the community. Take a plantation of 3,000 acres, we will say, worth £2 an acre all round, good and bad and indiff~rent. A great deal of the land taken up by planters is only used by them for grazing purposes, and is only worth 10s. an acre. Therefore I think I take a fair valuation in setting it down as worth £2 an acre all round. The value of that man's land then would be £6,000. The annual value place<1 on it for the purpose of taxation by the divisional board is £300, and the divisional board mte unit i<, £15 per annum. This plantation which I have in my mind's eye cost, or there has been spent upon it, £120,000; hut owing to the present depreciation we will wipe out two-thirds of that, and put the present value at £40,000; so that, giving the 'rreasurer's proposals the benefit of £80,000, the owner of this plantation will be t"xed to the extent nf £166 13s. 4d. per annum, should this property tax become law.

Ways and JJ!Ieans. [5 AmusT.] Ways and Means. 471

Including the divisional board rate, the taxation on this prnJwrty comes to £181 13s. 4d. If you deduct the £30 Government suboicly to the divi­sional.board from the amount of the property tax, you wrll find that the central Government make a profit of £13G 13s. 4d., and therefore I say that this tax will utterly stamp out our industry. \Ve cannot carry on if this tax is imposed. \Ve are taxed heavily enough DO\V, Goodness kno\vs \Ve

have suffered enough through all past Govern­ments! \Ye have been led to embark in this enterpri.se believing that the Government would keep their faith with us; but that faith has been broken, and now that we have suffered to the extent that two-thirds of the value of our e·,tates has been wiped out, we are asked to submit to a property tax which will utterly and entirely ruin us. Look at what the planter has t•) put up with at the present time ! You say you won't allow hin1 chea1J and reliable labour to carry on his occupation. You F•ay that must cease. 'rhen what do you do to encourage him to em!Jloy agricultural implements 11nd machinery? You put on a tax of 16 per cent. You stop him there bec~ause he cannot get the machinery he ref[uires in this colony. ]'' o man has ever marle it here yet, while in connec­tion with this class of machinery inventions are being made every day, and rnen are taking out patents for them. By the time a man pays for the patent rights, ancl the freight on machinery, and the cost of it, w.ith 15 per eent. to the Government by way of taxation, it is clear that the planters are effectively prohibited from using machinery. Yuu prohibit one thing and say, "You shall not have the other." The cost, along with the Government tax of 15 per cent., renders the use of agricultural imple­ments prohibitory. Then there is another thing to consider, and that is the cost of sugar bags. \V e cannot buy them here, and the 15 per cent. put on them by the Govern­ment has not induced anyone here to attempt their manufactnre. These bags cost ns at lt.~st from Ss. to 10s. for every ton of sugar, and it must be remembered that we get nothing for them, a.s tl~e purchaser of the sugar get8 thern for nothing. ,\V e have to pay 15 per cent. duty, and from Ss. to 10s. per ton of sugar for the bag.;,) and then when we have thmn in our stores we are to be asked to [Y 'Y ld. in the £1 on them. Look at another article-rice. That is very largely used by the planter to feed his men-is largely used also in every hous~ in the North-am} we find a duty of 9s. a cwt. on i&,, lOO per cent. duty on a commodity used in every house in the North !

Mr. HODGKE\SON: You votedforthesetaxes. Mr. 00\VLEY : I did not vote for them. Mr. HODGKINSON: Your name is down

in the divisions. Mr. DRAKE: You voted against the rednc­

tion of 5 per cent. on machinery. Mr. COWLEY: I believe I voted consistently

on every item of the tariff; and I belie,•e I voted against every increase J>ruposed. If not, I have made a mistake; but if my memory serves me, I believe I voted against almost every increase with the exception of that on shot, a trifling thing that would not proha.bly bring in more than about £5 per annum. \Ve have Poen, then, that the homestead selector, the small grazier, and the sugar planter, all resident in the l'\orth and labouring under great disabilities at the present time, will be very severely affected under the proposed property tax:. These people are those who support and maintain the divisional boards, and I consider that if no other scheme can be brought forward to procnre the money necessary to carry on the Government, it would be much better to, and they would gladly do so, forego the endow-

ment which the Government pay at present, rather than submit to this property tax. In the district which I represent there are four divisional boards, and I shall not be afraid to go before them and place this matter honestly before them, because I believe I shall have their support inasmuch as, if no other remedy can be found, they would mther forego the endowment than submit to this property tax, provided that the Government will amend the Divisional Boards Act and allow then1 power to increase their rates, and also extend the time for the payment of loans they have already borrowed and reduce the interest upon them from 5 percent. to 4 per cent. I shall not giva ma,ny nwre arg-uments upon this question, because manv other members on this side wish to speak ; bnt. 'r shall, before sitting down, just simply re,'iew the position in which we are now jJlaced, or, at any rate, in which I feel I am placed. \V e have a proposal by the Trm"urer and an amend­ment by the leader of the Opposition. So far as the financial proposotls of the Government are concerned, I agree entirely v.rith one portion of them. I agree entirely with the increased duties on svirits, :md the excise duty on beer. Therefore I do not wholly disagree with their proposals, but I certainly do object to the property tax in its present form. \Ve have heard a good deal about exemptions, and in all probability there will be many exemptions which wili make the tax fall less heavily on the working classes. If they a.re brought forward in Com­mittee I shall certainly support them; if not, I shall do my very best to induce the Government either to withdraw the proposed property tax or to defeat them upon it. But I cannot vote for the amendment of the hem. the leader of the Opposition, simply because I do not know what is to follow. What are the proposals of the hon. the leader of the Opposition? A land tax or a property tax in another form. I cannot support a land tax pure and simple, because I believe it \vill be Inore injurious, nwre iniquitous, and more detrimental to the intere,ts of the N orthun portion of the colony than a property tax would be. Therefore I crumot support the hon. gentle­man in his proposed bnd tax.

An Ho:-!OURABLE ~!EMBER: He has not -pl'b­posed a land tax.

Mr. CO\YL:I<;Y: He is pledged to it up to the hilt. I do not see how he can possibly withdraw from it. I feel assured that if he had been sitting on the Treasury benches now he would have bronght down a land tax. Therefore I should like to know what we are going to get­in what position we should be if we voted for the amendment of the hon. the leader of the Opposicion and defeated the Governn:ent. Of course I am thoroughly aware that if the amendment is carried it means that the party now in power will go to the other side, and the Op1'usition will take their places on the Trea,mry benches. Then I want to know how the ]'\ orthern portion of the colony will be affected by defeating the Government at the present time. I fail to see that it would be benefited. \Ve know this : That one of the bitterest opponents the North and separation ever had has been the hon. the leader of the Opposi­tion. \V e know that he went home to stop separa­tion, and that he succeeded ; and we know also that he insulted the whole of the people of the Northern portion of the colony by the \Vay in which he spoke of t.hem in connection with the separation petition, as not being known to the police. That will never be forgiven by the people of the North. I ask, what are the people of the North to expect from a gentleman, or an individual, who has clone all this to pre­vent separation, and who has traduced them in the way I have stated? I would also ask what

472 Ways and Means. [ASSE:~fBLY.] Ways and lJ!Ieans.

has been done by that hon. member for the furthemnce of the sugar industry? And I would also bracket with him the name of the senior member for North Brisbane, Sir T. Mci!wraith. What has he done for the sugar industry? Before he met his con;tituents he issued a manifesto abolishing kanaka labour, saying that he would have nothing to do with it, and it must cease. I feel assured thnt if the hon. gentleman had nailed his coloms to the mast on that occasion, and had gone before the electors of North Brisbane and said he was prepared to grant an extension of the Pacific Islanders Act for another five years he would have been returned by just as big a majority as he was at the last election.

HoNOURABLE MEMBERS of the Opposition : No, no!

Mr. COWLEY: I believe he would, because at that time the people of Bnsbane, and of Queensland generally, were desirous of a change of Government, and they would have taken the hon. gentleman with those views on the kanaka question.

HONOURABLE ME}!BERS: No, no!

Mr. COWLEY: Be that as it may, if not he should have gone down with colours flying, aml the planters would have been bound to assi~t him in every shape and form. But we now find two leading men in the House who, although they are pronounced protectionists, are both pro­nounced against the planting industry and against separation. Then, I a$k, how can any Northern members honestly vote for the amend­ment of the hon. the leader of the Opposition, the result of which will be to place that party in power. We have nothing to gain by it. If we had anything to gain by it, if we could see that the country would be benefited, we should vote for the amendment.

Mr. HODGKINSON: What is your figure­black labour ?

Mr. COWLEY: I do not know what the hon. gentleman means. Consistency of purpose­that is my figure. I like men to be consistent. I like men who sanctioned the introduction of kanakas either to do so still or to go down with it.

The HoN. SIR S. W. GRIFFITH: You accuse me of consistency.

Mr. COWLEY: No; of inconsistency. I proved distinctly in the Sugar Commission debate that yon said you could not abolish the introduction of kanakas, that you could not see your way to prevent them from coming in.

The HoN. SIR S. W. GRIFFITH : That was during that time.

Mr. COWLEY: Yes; I am saying it was during that time. I say you very soon changed your opinion about it.

The SPEAKER: I must remind the hon. member that he must address the Chair.

Mr. COWLEY : All I wish to say is this : That I ca,nnot vote for this proposed property tax, but I am not going to vote for the amend­ment. But when the propet'ty tax goes into committee I shall do my very utmost to rerluce the injurious and evil effects of it, or else to induce the Government to abandon the scheme and subrr,it something beLter. I feel asoured that if I went to my constituents now-I don't know their opinions, therefore I take upon my­self the whole responsibilities anrl conse­quences of my action - I say there are four divisional boarrls in that dbtrict, and I believe honestly that if the matter were plainly

put before them, rather than submit to the taxation proposals of the Treasurer, they would forego the endowment. The Treasurer has told us that if the endowment is abolished there will be no need for "dditioual taxation. I understand that about £300,000 n, year is paid a way to divisional boards and municip<1lities as endowment; ar,d that would ahout equal the amount of the deficit. Therefore, if the endowment ceases, we sh"ll he finctncially sound at once, und be able to reduce the del1cit within a very short space of time. It may be sn,id tlmt we cctnnot do this at once. Very well, then let us issue Treasury biils to tide us over the next twelve months or two year,,, until we can reduce the deficit. If it is distinctly understood by both sides that the en­dowment is to be abolished, the divisional boards will know that it must be w, and they will be prepared for it in the meantime by curtailing ex­penditure, by submitting to increased taxation over which they have whole and sole control, or by carrying on their works in a rrwre economical manner for the benefit of themselves and the community. I do not see how we can escape taxation, and carry on the Government; but unless the pmposals now made are very consider­ably modil1ed, and unless there "re a great many more exemptions than we have yet heard of, I cannot support the taxation proposed by the Government.

Mr. GLASSEY said: Mr. Speaker,-Before this matter goes to a division I would like to say a few words concerning it. It is, I think, per­fectly apparent to all members of the House that the finances of the colony "re in a by no means satisfactory condition, and it is clearly the duty of the Government to propose so,ne scheme of taxation which will meet the difficulties we have now to deal with. The Government have not hesitated to propose a remedy which they, no doubt, consider is of a satisfactory character. There are, however, decided objections to be taken to it. \Vith some portions of the pro­posal I entirely concur. Like the previous speaker, the hon. member ior Herbert, I go with the Government in the proposal to in­creaRe the excise duty on bu,r, and the duty on spirits. Those m·e proper articles for taxa­tion. \Vhen extm duties "re required luxuries such as beer mHI spirits are entitled to bear a fair share of the burden, if indeed not very con­siderably more than the Treasurer proposes at the present time. The Colonial Treasurer deserves to be congratulated on the manner in which he has put the matter before the House, and I think he left no doubt in the minds of hon. members with reg-ard to what the issues of his proposals are-namely, that if the Government do not carry the scheme as it has been pro­poserl, they are prepared to leave office and allow the matter to be dealt with by others. That is his dedaration. So far as I am con· cerned, when the question comes to a division I shall vote against the Government, because, althongh I a.,ree, as I ha,·e said, with some of their proJJ<"als, I cannot "gree with the property tax as it is now proposed. From the manner in which the matter was placed before the House by the Colonial Tre,~urer, I "m perfectly per­suaded that the hon. gentleman believes in his own mind that his scheme is the best that could be de,·ised under the circumstances, and that he is ]1repared to abide hy the issue, whatever that issue may be. Nloreover, I think from the tone of his speech that it would be a relief to him if some other person took his place and he had more leisure to devote to other matters. I regret exceed­ingly that the Government when restoring the beer duty, which was taken off some time ago, did not also see their \\'a V to increase it, seeing that the duty on manv articles we have to procure through the Customs h"s been con,iclerably increased,

Ways and .!Weans. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and "Weans. 473

and in some cases doubled. At the least, we might have expected that the excise duty would have been increased from 3d. per gallon to Gd. per gallon. If that were done considerably more revenue would be raised from this source than is now anticipated. vVhen the Bill gets into com­mittee--if it does get there-I shall, in fulfilment of a pledge given to my constituents during the las~ recess, be prepared to submit a proposal to mcrease the duty from 3d. to 6d. per gallon, and take the opinion of hon. members on the question. The hon. member for JYiackay, 11r. Dalrymple, in combating some arguments brought forw;trd by some hon. members against the con­tinuance of the endowment to local authori­ties, stated that the Government were pledged to continue that endowment for some time longer; that they were in honour bound to carry out their pledge, if possible ; that every reasonable effort should be made to carry it into effect, and that if they did not carry it out it wo_uld be a gr~ater injury to the country. vV1th that I entirely agree; but I say that if there was one impression stronger than another left on the public mind during the last general election it was that no additional taxation was required, and that the only thing needed was the exercise of economy. vVhen the late Government were in offic0, and Sir S. W. Griffith found it was impossible to carry on the Government without additional taxation, he proposed in 1887 to tax land values­to impose a tax of 1d. in the £1 on the unim­proved value of all freehold land above the first ~500-and he was immediately met by a resolu­twn from the present head of the Government to the effect that the finances of the colony were not in such a condition as to warrant further taxation. That practically was the io;sue placed before the country at the last general election; and the hon. member for Toowoomba, Mr. Groom, a few evenings ago read out the names of nineteen members on the other side who were returned on the distinct understanding that they would support Sir T. Mci!wraith as their leader and no additional taxation. But no sooner did the party opposite assume offiQe than they found it necessary, in order to conduct the aff11irs of the colony, to impose additional taxation, and tax­ation was accordingly increased to a con­siderable extent through the Customs. Dur­ing the two years the altered tariff has been in operation, upwards of £500,000 ha,-e been raised by means o£ the additional taxation imposed by the present Government. If the Government, therefore, are loyal to their pledge.> in one direction, and continue the £2 ftlr £1 endowment to the local authorities, then they are equally bound in honour to the pledge they gave that no further taxation shonltl be imposed. I did not enter tha House on that cry. I be­lieved with the then exi:;ting Government that in consequence of the condition into which our finances had got it was impossible to con­duct the affairs of the colony without further taxation, and I entered this House on the distinct understanding that I should support the leadPr of the Opposition in his pro­posal to tax land values, which is one of the most equitable taxes that could be proposed. I noticed that the hon. member for Mackay em­phasi,;ed the point that the Government were in honour bound to continne the £2 for £1 endow­ment to divisional boards, and I entirely agree with him on that point; but if they were bound in that direction they were also bound to impose no further taxation, as they were most emphatic in their ~tntement that no fresh taxation was required, anrl that what was needed was to exercise wise and judicious economy in order to redeem the financial affairs of the country. I will not go through the speech of the present Colonial

Secretary when he asked the Colonial Treasurer in 1887, to take back his financial proposals and to cut down his expenditure, as he very well might do, as he was perfectly able to take off at least 10 per cent. without the country suffering in the least. I shall not weary the House with quotations, but shall trouble hon. members with reading one extract from the speech of the hon. member for l'IIackay, l'IIr. Dalrymple, with reference to the endowment to local authorities. The hon. gentle­man said:-

"The bon. the leader of the Opposition said some· thing like this: That the GrJvcrnment believe their hands to be tied. I believe the hands of thn Govern· ment are tied. An honest man is bound by his promises, ::md a dishonest man is bonnd by the la\v. \Vhether we can afford tlw money or not, a promise has been given to the divisional boarcls or to the people who manage them; they have made their anangcment.s according to the promises of the Govexnment, and the Government arc bounrl to carry out their promises. If the pre"ent Government repudiate 011e set or promises, how can people of the colony believe in that Covern~ ment or any Government? I say that Government" above all other bodies are boluld to l{eep faith \Vith the pnblic."

I ask whetherthe Governmmt have kept faith with the public? Have those nineteAn members who came into the House pledged to the hilt against the imposition of any further taxation kept faith with the public? There was a profound im­pression left on the public mind at the last general election that no further taxation was required. Ha.s that impression been removed or has it been incret'tsed? I have already stated that within two short yea,rs, through the Customs alone, this small community have paid £500.000 additional taxation to what was im­posed before this Government took office. I entered this Chamber on the understanding that further taxation was retjuired, and I believe that now. Of course I do not blame the Govern­ment for making some proposals wherewith to carry on the affairs of the country, We have had a remarkable change in a very short time. K ot quite three years ago tlw party at present in power embodied in a resolution their opinion that the condition of affairs in the colony then did not W[Lrrant further taxation; and yet the sn,me party put on additional taxa­tion to the extent I have mentioned, and now propose to, make further inroads on the tax­payers. I believe there is a considerable amount of extra taxation required, and while opposing this property tax I do not oppose the Govern­ment prop.>sals altogether. I entirelY agree with the proposal to incre'tse the duties on spirits and beer, and, as I have said, if the Bill gets into Committee I shall end ea vonr to make the excise duty on beer 6d. instead of 3d., inasmuch as the duty on most other articles on which duty is collected wets increased from 7~ to 15 per cent. when the tariff was last revi.sed. I say beer is well able to bear it, and so is liquor able to bear extra taxation, and if it has a tendency to cause people to drink less and can,,e less misery I shall go with the hon. member for Herbert, and endeavour to dimini~h the evils of drink in that direction. I also agree with the Government in their inten­tion to keep faith with the local authorities, and continue the endowment of £2 to £1 where it is required ; but I do not ag-ree with them in thi& proposal to tax thR improvements of the country. I do not agree with a proposal by which the improvements made by the people of the agricultural diotricts of this colony, after considerable toil and great exertion, shall be taxed. So far as the taxing of land values goes I am heartily with that, and there is one source from which revenue might be largely drawn, and which should be attacked in force, and that is Mount l'IIorgan. Hon. members may laugh, but I shall have more to say on that

474 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and JJ£eans.

subject further on. Speaking of expenditure I can, I think, leave this matter to the hnn. me~1-ber for Toowong who, no doubt, will follow me; but I think I have shown that the judi­cious and wi.se econon1y in carrying on the affairs. of the country recommen'ded by the Colomal Secretary when in op]J<"ition, has not been adopted when the hon. gentleman had an opportunity of carrying out his own reconl­mendation. In addition to the £250,000 ]Jer annu1n extra taxation, being collected through the Cust01ns, the Govennnent prOlJOSe to raise another £350,000. There are mrtny ways in which that .mm could be raised, and one I have a.lready mentioned is by the taxation of land values; the taxation of that which accrues to a person through no action of his own, but through the action of the gener ~1 cmn­lnunity. No juster or fairer taxcttion can, in my humble opinion, be levied in any country than that. The hon. member for Mackay, Mr. Dalrymple, considers this property ta.x a righteous one. \V e are told t:11newhere th<-tt ·' righteousnes.::; exalteth a nation, ''and I suppose, according to the hon. member, this country will be exalted by the imposition of this tax. I think that those upon whom it will be imposed will hflrdly bless those who impose it, and I think that could we hear them they will be more likely to utter in1pre'?n.ti(lns aqainst those who impo~e such a tax. I have said thLtt if the Government will withdraw this proposal, and go in for taxing land values, I shall be hettrtily with them ; but we have hearcl from time to time that they have no intention of doing anything of the kind, because it is alleged it would be unjust to one cla~s of the community. I ask is it unfair to tllx one portion of a community that has been largely favoured by the rest of the comwunity ? I do not think so. Supposing we single out this favoured class and ask them to pay a small moiety of that which they never made, would it be irrational or wrong, or would it be immoral? I do not think so. I do not think it would be in the least unfair to ask that number, however small-even though they formed a much smaller number th>tn they do­who lmve been so favoured and who have accu­mulated considerable wealth in many instance; at least through the action of the general com· munity, to pay a small portion in return. I can only say that whoever the person may be who will take the hull by the horn.s and tax ~and values, he sh,tll have my hearty support, rf I am a member of this House when the pro­posal is made. Go down our princip:tl streets here, and what do we see. Look for imtance at the corner of Queen nnd \Vlnrf streets. There we see a vaoccnt piece of land which has been slightly improved inaswuch as it w_.ts a high rock and has been cut down to about the level of the street. According to the Tt·ea­surer's proposnl that piece of property will be t!lxed on its unimproved Yal~:te; but if we go a httle further down we come to another piece of htnd on which splendid buildings have been erected, and the erection of which afforded a con­siderable amount of work, and added considerably

. to the general prosperity of the community, and yet those lmildings under this propo"'l ;;, ill be taxed in addition to the value of the land on which they are erected. I ask is that hir? Take for instance the street in which I live. There are two good houses erected in it at consider­able cost, and there is an allotment hetween them which has bad nothing done to it. The allotment between them has had nothing what­ever done to it; not a shilling has been spent upon it by the owner-I say the "owner" be­cause that is the expression commonly in use, but I think no man should own land; he should only hold it, and then only so long as he puts it to good use. Taking these three properties, two

of them have been considerably improved, and by reason of those improvements the vac>tnt allotment has acquired very considerable value. \Vhere, then, is the hardship, as some persons allege it is, to sing-le out and tax those who have really done nothing to impro,e. their ]JrO­perties and for the good of the country, but have held their land entirely to pocket J;he unearned increment that has grown by the industry of other people? Then, again, there is a consider­able number of farmers in my district, some of whom have improved their land very highly, and, by the way, I would point out that the more highly lands are improved the more highly will they be taxed. Take two farmers in that district; they have erected dwellings, built outhonsE < and other build­ings necesc.ary to enable them to Clwry on their business, and under this proposal tbey will be taxed on the results of their industry and frugality, while the slovens, so to speak, who have done nothing at all to improve their pro­perties, will get off almost free compared with those who have done so much to increase the general prosperity 'of the country. Then take business houses in th~e towns and country dis­tt·icts. Not only will the land upon which those buildings have been erected be taxed, but so will the buildings themselves and the stocks they contain, although they have already paid heavy duties through the Customs. I a'k is it fair that tho.<e who have paid duty on their goods should be again called upon to ptty taxes on them in their business places? I am speaking now more particularly of wholesale houses; and HO far as we know those goods will be taxed, having no evi­dence to guide us with regard to the exemrJtions. Then those goods may be followed into the hands of the retail dealers, if they have more than £500 worth, and taxed for the third time. I say, Mr. Speaker, it is a most monstrous proposal. Of ccur>e some persons may think it is very peculiar that I, holding the opinions which it is well known I do, should argue against a general property tax ; but I say, let the tax be founded on jnstice, as every tax should be, and I shall support it. But I say to tax those who have improved their property by their industry and enugy, while those who have done practically nothing to improve theirs hut who may perhaps be only waiting a favourable opportunity to sell out and go elsewhere, is manifestly unfair. Here I join ie<ue with the Gowrnrnent with regard to their property tax. Heference has been made during the course of the discu"'ion to the fact that the leader of the Opposition went to the country at the last elechon on a land tax pure and simple. He did nothing of the kind. He went for very much more than a mere land tax. I

·will not detain the House by re"ding that portion of the manifesto which bore on taxation which he issued on that ocnsion, bnt will oul.v say that that portion of it covered a great deal more ground than fixing or tying him down to a mere land tax. If these proposals of the Government are c'uried out, as they may be, then unquestion­ably-and herein comes the hardship-the mer­chant will ]JUt a higher price on his goode, and the retail dealer in turn must of necessitY put it on the general consumer. That will be the result of the imposition of this tax. I do not by any means join in the cry that if rnoney invested in banks :-!,nd elsewhere is going to be taxed it will tt'ke to itself wings and go elsewhere, becr~u,coe I have just been reading the report of a conference of the :Freetrade and Lil,eral Association, held in Sydney about twelve months ago, and I finrl that on one resolution pac •;eel there were four diffm ent amendments moved, all running in the direction of taxing land values and other accumulated wealth that is well able to bear it; so t!.at even supposing some

Ways anrl Means. [5 AuGusT.] Ways and Means. 475

persons take money away and deposit it in other colonies, they will, perhaps, find things equally as severe there as here. Therefore, although I cannot support the Government in imposing this tax, I do not share in the cry that ruin and disaster will follow by the removal of capital elsewhere. I will not at­tempt to enumerate the harrlships that would happen to persons who have erected buildings on their land. It would not be wise at this stage of the debate to do so, beca1me there are many members who want to speak. I will therefore defer my remarks to some future occasion. But if it were prudent to do so now, I could show the gross hardship that would be inflicted on persons by taxing improvements and industry. 'Ne should concentrate our efforts on taxing the people in a way that will be the least burdensome. One means I have already ad verted to-namely, taxing land values. Another source from which we might get a large addition to the revenue is Mount Morgan. I know that my remarks on this subject will be mis­understood and may create a little feeling. I do not, however, make them because a large number of members in this House are interested in Mount M organ, or because many members on the Government side are very largely interested in it. But I think that is a ,·ery fertile source from which we might obtain additional revenue. In the Hou"e last year I mentioned Mount M or­gan as a means by which re•·enue could be raised, and the fact is well known to hon. members and to many of the public, that last year that mine yielded £1,100,000 to the shareholders. A pro­perty which yields such a return as that is well able to bear taxation, and if there were many members of my way of thinking, or if I had the power as I have the will, a considerable portion of that £1,100,000 would be returned to the State. Few, if any of the gentlemen who received that moneyputforth anyphysicalefforttoobtain it, and I would take a large slice of it for the Govern­ment. That would soon wipe out the deficit and relieve other classes in the community who can little afford to be taxed. The hon. member for Herbert in the course of his 'peech referred to the hardship that would be imposed by this property ta,x on perRons engaged in the sugar indu8try. I find tlut he >1nd his colleague on the Sugar Commis>ion, .Mr. King, valued the machinery on the sugar plantations at£1,000,000. I think that if that industry is in the languishing condition it has been in for some time past, this property tax will be a far more serious blow to the industry than the blow which it iR alleged was inflicted on it by the leader of the Oppo>i­tion by his legislation and regulations on the coloured labour question. The blow which was supposed to have been given to the sugar industry by the leader of the Opposition when in power was referred to by the hon. m em her for Mackay, ::Yfr. Dalrymple, who said that in con­sequence of the action of the leader of the Oppo­sition people would neither in vest in the sugar industry nor in the pastoral industry. This matter of sugnr industry was discussed during last session, and I think proof positive was then given that it was not in consequence of the action of the kader of the Opposition, so far aR the labour regulations were con­cerned, that men would not invest their money in the sugar industry, but in consequence of the fall in the price of sug:w and the high price of kanakaR. I referred to this matter last year in the debate on the sugar ques· tion, and I !1m obliged to refer to it again, in order to combat the statements m<~de from time to time by some hon. members opposite with regard to the alleged injury done to the sugar industry by my hon. friend, the leader of the Opposition. In the report on the sugar

industry submitted to this House by the hon. member for Herbert and Mr. King, it is stated at page xxx :-

" Silv'C 1883 sugars of all cla~ses have fatlen in price fully 50 per cent., and there can be no doubt that this fall, which is likely to be perm~ment, has been a. principal cause of the depression of the sugar industry in Queensland."

Then we have the remark that ktnakas could not be procured for less th><n about lGs. per­week, or about double what they had previously cost ; so that in the same report it is further stated that the pri~e of coloured labour had increased fully 50 per cent. since 1883. If, then, during that period the price of sugar fell 50 per cent. and the price of labour was increased 50 per cent., was that not sufficient to justify financial institutions in withholding the loans which sugnr-growers reqnired? They may have been hampered in consequence of not being able to borrow. And now with regard to the pastoral industry, which was supposed to be ruined during the time the leader of the Opposition was in office, I think every member of this House is aware that from 188± to 1887, or at all events to the close of 188G, we experienced one of the most severe and disas­trous droughts which has ever overtaken this colony, sheep and cattle dying in gre"t numbers. Cottld it be expected under those circumstances that financial institutions would lend as much as they would do otherwise to pastoralists and ag:riculturists who had suffered so much from the drought? Those facts are a suf­ficient answer to the statement that it was in consequence of the action of the leader of the Opposition when in power that IJCr­sons were prevented from embarking in those industries. A tax on land values would be a fair tax, because though the lands nre held by a small class they are a favoured class, and the increased values have accrued to them through no action of their own. If land values were taxed the land would be used for some useful purpose, and the whole community 1\'ould be benefited. If people do not use their land they should be taxed so that they will either have to use it or to sell it to people who will use it; and if a land tax \vere put into operation much good \vould result to the country, because land instead of lying idle would be put to its best use. Instocl of having so many vacant allotments about Brisbane and the other cities we should ha\ e buildings erected on them, and a great many workmen would be employed on those buildings. And instead of people who want cheap land having to live in swamps and other places injurious to health they would be able to get land in suitable localities. Jf the present Government do not deal with this question of taxing land '>a lues some Government will come here strong enough to compel the per­sons who hold land for speculative f'Urposes to either use the hncl themselves or sell it to others who will use it. And what I have said with regard to city and snbnrban land applies equally to country land. The Treasurer has told us that, whereas we got from our mih·:a;~·s £2 13s. per cent. six years ago, we are now getting scarcely £1 per cent. That is because so much of the land in close proximity to the railways is held by people who do not put it to Hs best use. lt is not occupied. If a tax were put on land value,, the owners of those lands would be com­pelled t.n use them or to sell them, and the consequence would re a large increase in settle· ment along our railways would take place, and a considerable increase in the traffic. It has been contended by some that we should reduce the salaries of the Civil servants. If the Treasurer could devise a scheme by which a little could be taken off those drawing something like £800 or £1,000 a year, and given to the class

4.76 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

drawing only £100 a year or less, I would give him my most cordial support. I do not share in the cry that we should reclLlCe the salaries of the Ciyil servants, except those who are most highly pmd. The salary of the Governor is £fi,OOO a year, and we were told some time ago by the J\Iinister for Mines that it took £3,000 a year in addition to keep up his household. I say tlu)t if it takes£3,000 a year to keep up one person's household there is room for a large reduction in that direction; ttncl I think we might reasonably tax those persons who come next to the Governor-one with £3,000 a year and the others with £1,500 a year ~ach. The hon. member for J\Iackay, J'.fr. Dalryrnple, said that those who oppo'e the proposal of the Government ought to find another remedy, and I agree 11ith him in that; but I fear that he \vill not agree with some of my remedie'. \Vhether he does or not, or whether they may be sneered at or laughed at, however, I will mention Pome of. them for what thev are worth. My hon. friend the member for Ips,;;,ich, JYir. Bar low, has referred from time to time to the "Lucinda," the cost of which is considerable

every year; and we might easily reduce that amount, and effect a considerable reduction m the pension list, which is increasing every year. Some of tho,;e receiving large pensions do not even reside in the colony, but spencl their money elsewhere; and I say that all absentees, whether landlords, property-holders, or pensioners ought to be com­pelled to pay handsomely to the State. In party warfare it is not considered wise for those who oppose the Government to find a 1·emedy in placo of the proposttl to which they object; but I say that no matter how humble a person may be in this Chamber, if he has a suggestion to mttke he should make it, no matter whether it is accepted or not. I remember reading that when Sir Robert Peel pl·oposed to repeal the Corn Laws in England, which he had vreviously opposed, the late Benjamin Disraeli, who was one of his supporters, chaffed him and said that he had can~·ht the Liberal party bathing and stolen their clothes. But even supposing that the clothes of the leader of the Opposition have been stolen, I say that if he or any other member can find a practical remedy least burdensome to the cmn­munity of wiping off the preRent deficit, it is his hounclen duty to do so. I fear, however, that the remedies I propose are too drastic to be ac­ceptable to some members of this House. I have always favoured an income tax. I came here pledged to support a tax on incomes above £200 a yea,r; and, notwith;;;tanding the Reeming insuper­able difficulties in the w"y of its collection, my opmion is that it is a fair, jnst, and equitable tax. 'rhe experience of 1nodern life is exactly in the opposite direction. The heavy en<l of the plank generally rests on the shoulders of those least able to bear it, and when ta,xation is provosed to be put upon the wealthy it is alw.1ys asked, "Why should the wealthy man because he is wealthy be taxed any more than the poor man?" 2\Iy reply to that is that he should be taxed because he is wealthy and because he is able to pay it, and because his wealth is made to a large extent by tho ,e who are poor. An income tax is a fair one, in n1y opinwn, and I would support such a tax heartily. I would also support a tax on the unearned value of land--the unettrned increment, as it i'­called-ancl I would reduce very consrderably the amount proposed to be exempted by the leader of the Opposition. Instead of exempting the improved value of all freehold land over and above the firet £500, I would fix the amount at £200, so as to exempt tho'e who have little meane. The hon. gentleman expected to realise £100,000 from this tax, but by limiting the exemvtion to £200 I think at least £200,000 would be realised. Then we should increase

the duty on beer, which is well able to bear it. Sometimes we are asked, " \Vnuld you tax the poor rnnn't5 beer?" 11y in1pres~ion is that be would be better if he never tasted it. I do not know the t v;te of it myself. Instead of 3d. a gallon, we should impose a duty of Gel. a gn,llon. It would give us £70,000, instead of tbe £35,000 which the Trea>urer expects to get. Then if we tax .Mount lYiorgan, not at the rate of ld. in the £1, but at the mte of Gel. in the £1, we shall get a very reasonable sum, £150,000, and only a very reasonable sum too, from that very wealthy mine. That is a very fertile source of reYenue; and, by the way, I shall quote from the balance-sheet for the year ending 17th December, 1889, to show what wonderful benefactors the sh11reholders of this mine are to the community, the number of persons they employ, and the amount of money that is expended among those whom they employ. 'rhe report says:-

"The directors now beg to present their fourth annual report, and in rloiug so 'vonltl call your attention to the statement of acconnt certified as col'rect hy the auditors on the 0lst :Jiav and 30th Km-ember, whie.h has ::tlready been submitted to you, and from which you 'vill see that for the pn'.;ent year your expenditure has been £J27,769 lBs. Sd."

I presume that is for wages and for wear and tem· in the working of the concern. The dividends paid to the fortunate shareholders amounted to £1,100,000. I have al"' in my pos,ession the names of some hon. gentlemen who are fortunate enoug·h to have shares and who occupy seats in this House, but I shall not make any remarks with regard to this matter, except to give expre'8ion to my opinion that these persons are well able to pay a larger amount thttn they are now asked by those pro­posals. These shareholders get their very large dividends without puLting forth one physical effort to obtain them. They suffer no risks nor inconvenience, they have no wet clothing, no danger of accident in the mine, but as the leader of the Opposition has said they sit in their chairs and open their envelopee, draw their cheques, fill in their slips, and send those cheques to the banks and have them depooited to their credit. If hon. members had the courage they should have, they would get a. large amount of rerenue from this mine, which belongs to the country.

The Ho:-~. P. PERKiifS: This House belongs to the country.

1\Ir. GLASSEY; Yes, and I am glad to say the members of this Honse belong to the country too, but I SU]ll"Jse they are here offering them­selves up as living sacrifices on the alt;,r of their bleeding country. Instead of getting £25,000 a vear from this mine as the Go\"errnent propose to" do, we should get a great deal more. I must say that it is to the credit of the Government and of those sitting behind them that they pro· pose taxing themselves to the extent they do. I do not wi;h in what I say to make any un­pleasant ren1arks again~t those bon. 1nernbers because they happen to be shareholders in this mine. I am not criticising individuals now, but the system, and the system is bad. I admit, of course, that e~ch and all of us would probably become shareholders if we had the opportunity, and I do nut say that ::;on1e gentlemen now holding shares ha Ye not 1•aicl a big price for them, and perhaps it might be a hard,hip to therr: if a tax of Gd. in the £1 were imposed; but the country has been wrong in allowing a law to rmnain in force which gave a few per.Mms the whole of the wealth of this miue which rt:otlly belm1gs to the State. I say it is one source which ought to supply a remedy to meet our finar.ci«l d1fficulties; and, so far as I am concerned, if there is a shadow of a chance of carrying such an amendment in this Chamber, should the Bill get into

Ways and Means. [5 AuGusT.] Ways and Means.

committee, I shall move that the tax to be levied upon Monnt Morgan be Gd. in the £1 instead of ld., ag is pro]>Oserl.

An Ho:-~ouRABLE :\IEolBER: ·what about Tar an· ganb1?

Mr. GLASSEY: I shall not deal with Taran· ganba at all. There are other companies and concerns upon \vhich a tax tnight re·tsonably be imposed, and from which we might get about £30,000 a year. YVe might reasonably expect to obtain as mnch from the Crown lessees of the country. Then, again, if we do not in1pose a general income tax, or should that be considered impracticable by the House, we might rm"onably ilnpose a tax upon persons having Hxed income8, and especially those getting large incon1es, some of whom I have aheacly mentioned, and that would, perh~p.s, bring in .£10,000 a year.

The PRE:\IIER (Hon. B. D. Morehead): You would tax only those you can reach.

Mr. GLASsgy: I would tax those who can afferd to ~pay, and of course whom we can reach, if we could not reach anyone the scheme would be impracticable, and would have to be abandoned. If we go through these various items no person ne~d he injured or overburdenecl. There is a general consensus of opinion in the House that every person in the State should ]>a.y in proportion to his ability ; but I join i8Sne with the Government a~ainst a property tax upon improvements. I say this will inflict a great harcbhip upon the small farmers of the country referred to by the hon. member for Herbert, inasmuch as it will tax their improvements. It will be a great hardship upon all who hold improved pro)Jerty, as compared with the owners of unimproved property. I say that the fairest, the most moral. and the most equitable tn.x that can he imposed, is a tax upon iand values as proposed by the leader of the Opposition. On this question I shall vote for the. amendment of the leader ufthe Opposition, and if the Government divide thc>ir proposals I shall he with them upon the increased dutks on imported spirits and beer, and the exci,,e duty on colonial~made beer. If, however, the resolntion is submitted to divi­sion as a whole, I shall feel in honour bound, for the reasons I have given, to support the amend­ment. Should the Bill reach committee, I shall be true to my opinions and shall, as I have stated, move amendments to raise the excise dnty upon beer to 6d., and to raise the tax upon !\fount Morgan property to Gd. instead of ld. in the £1.

Mr. ALLAN said: :Mr. Speaker,-I rise because I consider it the duty of every memb0r of this House to give his O]>inion upon a matter of such importance as that put before us in the proposals of the Treasurer. I do not at all pretend to like this property tax, hut I am fully alive, as I supp.Jse every other mem· her of the House is, to the great necessity for raising revenue in Rmne n1anner, in ordel' that our revenue may be made to meet our ex~ penditure. The deficit ,,,:e know must he faced, and confidence inspired in those from whom we have borrowed money, and to whom we will have to go to borrow more. I do not like this tax at all, I admit; but as yet I have heard no sug~ gestion from any member that seems to me deserving of more confidence than the propo<.als of the Colonial Treasurer. The hem. me m her for Mackay, :\'lr. D>tlrymple, said the other night that he con,idered that any member who had any suggestion to offer, however crude it might bP: was bound in honour to offer it, if he considered it would assist the House or the country. Before I sit down I have a sugg".::;tion tn ma,ke, which though neither new nor original may perhaps in a crisis like this commend itself to the House. I can

see that with a debt of £28,000,000, or £70 per head of the population of the country, with an annual interest char~e nf oYer £1,000,000 st,•rling; with our rail ways paying less than 1 per cent., which in 1884 \mmght in 3 percent.; with our lands only bringing in 30s. per h< :eel of the population, when in 18~2 they returned .£3 p"l' be d, and with the revenue from this source still decreas­ing, and 'vith the dt:>ticit we ha Ye continuing to increase-I sav that in the face of these things it is easy to st~ thnt a remedy of some kil)d is speedily required. It watte1c not whether th.,se in power now retnin their seatR on the Trea8nry benches, or whether either of the merr,bers for K orth Brislm,ne arrange a GnYd'nrnent to take their pla.ces; hecanse \Yhnever 1nny be returned to power will reqnire to raise the necPssary funds, whether by taxation or othenv-ise. The increased reYenue required is something like £230,000, and the :stmior 1nember for North Bri...;bane h:1H suggested that it miiTht be aclYi.,able to go to the Cnstoms for this ~;,m, or for a part of it. .Judging by the experience we have had of the tariff in the past, I do not think any member of the Hou,e, and cert"inly Yery few people in the country, belieYes that we can get any appre· ciable )tart of this £2:i7, 000 from that source. 'fhe hon. the leader of the Opposition we know is pleclge<l to a land tax, and I presume tlmt if he were in power it "ould form part of his policy. I haYe combat<d that nut"ide the House-! was not ~'member at the time-on the g-round that it is diotinctly chss legislation, and cJa,,s legislation on a very small portion of the population. If I re­collect rightly, under the land tax promulgated by the hon. the lender of the Opposition, tomakeg-ood the present deficiency would require something like 2d. in the .£1 of capital value; and that, if imposed on our farmers and landholders, in addition to the taxes already imposer! by the divisional boards and municipA.l councils, would be far more than they would be able to ~e~.r. I do not contend that a land tax is not a leg1trmate tax. Under certain circumstances I admit that it is quite legitimate. It is a legitimate tax in plnc~s where all the land, or nearly the whole of it-the best part of it-has been alienated, such, for instance, a:' Victoria and New South \V ales ; but here nn per cent. of the country is still our own, onlv 2~-J,- per cent. of it having been alien­ated, ancl I- consider that if we taxed that 2?, per cent. it would necessarily react on the other 9n per cent., and the people of the country w<iuld be the greatest sufferers thereby. I put it in thL; form: That for every .£1 the country would get from the people through t.his tax, they would be £3() the loser, that is to say, that it would react on the rest of the country which we hold as thirty-nine is to forty. I may he wrong in H(\.' calculation, but that is how I work it out. Therefore, if you tax the one portion the other thirty-nine must indirectly b<-ar itd pl'Oportion, ancl a man will not give so much for land that is taxe<l as he would for land if the tax was not on it. That is my opinion of a land tax pure and simple, Heturning to the property tax, I myself would much prefer that the JYlinistry conlL1 have seen their way to have hrought down a Bill asking- the House to allow them to sell a certain portion of the land< of the country -the public esta.te. That I know would be a very difficult thing to do. I know the amount of oppo.;ition it would arouse; bnt I believe that many men who preYionsly theoretically and J'rac­tically and conscientionsly believed it was wrong to sell our lanrh, or any portion of them, now would much rather see them, or a portion of them, parted with than to have the people, over­burdened with taxation as they are now, still more heaYily oppres.sed by further ~axation. The area of land whwh we hold 1s 428,000,000 acres, of which 10,000,000 or a little more

478 Wa;IJS and M.eans. [ASSEMBLY.] Wa,ys and Means.

has been alienate<1 ; that is 2~ ]Jer cent. of the whole, and it inclndes all the pre·emptives of the squatters, all the Darling llowns, all the Peak Downs, town lamls-in fact, every kind of land that has been alienated. I, Sir, would sell. a considemh!e portion of the resumed land' which the conntry holls now, if it were possible, rather than impose this tax. I know it is argued that we could not find buyers, but I can say that last week I had occasion to speak to a ea pitahst, a man \Vho u~~ociates with large capitaliHts, and he told me that in a fortnight he could sell 2,000,000 acres of lanrl in this colony at 10,s. an acre if it were put in the market. I do not ad voc>tte an~· such whole, ,de alienation as that; but rather than put on this tax I would srty sell 400,000 acres per annnm at a rnininn1n1 pricfl nf 10s. per acre. If hy doing this we could do away with the necess1tv for this tax it would be a very good thing., Of conr>e, all the lttnd need n<it be sold at the minimum price; no doubt a good deal of it could be sold for more. Then those who purchasPd it would require to make improve­ments for their own protection, and this would employ bbour, give employment to our railways, more trade to our rne-rchants, and altogether, directly as well as indirectly. it would do a great deal of good to the country. No douht, Sir, we ought to h•gislate for pllsterity, but I think only within fair limits. Now, taking this suggestion of mine to sell 400,000 acres of land per annum, it wili take us over 1,000 years to dispose of the whole of our estate.

Mr. GRI:VJES: The eyes would be picked out before that.

Mr. ALLAN: l'\o rloul>t they would; but as' popuLttion incre>tses we shall find land that is thought of little value now of considerahle value then. That being the case, I think we may very well leave the heirs of those future ages to leghlate for themselves. I have no doubt they will be intelligent people, quite able to look after themselves without ns legislating for them now. \Vhat do we know about this conntry in a thousand years ? It may belong to Germany or China, or Bellamy's ?'egime may be in exi,tence. \V e know nothing of the«e things. vVhat we do know is that we have this deficit to meet; that we have to keep up the credit of the country, and I am certain that the majority of the people of the colony would prefer to part with portion of our public estate to being burdened with this proposed imposition, if it is possible to do it. I my,;elf have no doubt that if we do not take some snch steps as this in the very near future, men will be found who will do so, and who will wonder that while we were arguing over theoretical fads we did not adopt the means available of so early getting over the difficnlty. \Vith regarcl to a pro­perty tax, New Zealand and America have been quoted very largely, and rightly so. In New Zealand the vroperty tax obtains for the very good reason that all the available land is alienated; and I do not think we want to imitate America in this particular. I do not think that this country is ready yet for a tax of 4n per cent. on its produce; that is what it is in the United States. I feel certain, Sir, that though we do not like this tax, for the sake of the good repute of the colony the majority of the House will support the Ministry in passing it. But I trust that wben the Bill dealing with this rnatter cmnes before us in comrnittee its opera­tion will be limited to two year,, ,,o that at the end of that time the constituencies will have the opportunity of saying whether they approve of this tax or whether they will try some other form of taxation. I also think it would be well to reduce the minimum. I cannot see that a man who, outside of his liabilities, is worth £500 of

a>Ssured property, should be considere<l a poor man, or treated as such. I maintain that if a man has property to the extent of £300 above hie liabilitie9 he doeil not pay too much if he pays 25s. in the year, in addition to what he payi1 already. The hon. member for Bundanba remarked that he would tax all incomes beyond £200, and that reminded me of the fact that de­positors in the Governmsnt Savings Bank get 5 per cent. on their deposits np to £200. Now, it is within my experience that a father with several children mav invest £800 or £000 in their names in the Government Savings Bank, and get 5 per cent. on the whole amount; but, under the proposal of the Government the whole of that amonnt wonld be exempted from taxation. I think that is a matter that will require looking into. I recognise the great difficulty in which the Government find themselves, through no fault of their own, and I recognise that they have tried to meet it man­fully. I do not like the tax, nor do I suppose anyone else likes it, but the difficulty mui1t be met, and I shall support the proposal' of the Government, and vote against the amendment. I trnst, however, as I said before, that there will be some limit 1mt to the operation of the Bill, and that, before long, it will be wiped off the statute book.

Mr. UNMACK said: Mr. Speaker,-The manner in which the taxation proposals were put before us by the Colonial Treasurer seems, in a meas•1re, to have prevented a clear inquiry into the Financial Statement itself. \Vhilst I admit the importance of a full discn"ion 011 the pro­posed taxation, I have no in ten· ion of entirely avoiding some small revision of the Financial Statement. I have no intention of wearying the Hou"e with a lot of figures or quotations, but I will say that the leader of the Opposition has clf'.:trly proved that, instead of a sewing of £8,000, as shown on the face of the Estimates, there will be, without reckoning the interest, an additional expenditure for the year of £120,000. These figures have not been contmdicted, and therefore I can take them as correct.

An HOKOURABLE MEMBER: \Vill you endorse them?

Mr. UN:MACK : Yes ; I will endorse them. The fact of the colony being £1,000,000 behind requires our most serious consideration. It is the largest deficit we have ever had, and the expen­diture is, at the same time, growing entirely out of proportion to the revenue. In a matter of this sort we have a right to make a practical inquiry, and I will put it in this way : Suppose this was my business. How shall I approach the subject'/ I would not go to my customers and say, "This does not pay me; you will have to pay more for my goods." I would, in the first instance, see whether I could not econo­mise in some w;ty. The Treasurer tells us, "It is hardly necessary for me to say that the Estimate,; of expenditure have been carefully con­side,red by the Government, and kept down to thelowest possible amount." I deny the correct­ness of that statement. In the first instance we are constantly told that the interest payable on the loan is one thing which causes the great defi­ciency in the revenue. The Treasurer is evi­dently of the same opinion, becrtuse he manifests it by producing to us, for the first tit!!e, a fresh table, which he calls table R ; and this table is built up in a manner most creditable to the hon. gentleman, and highly acceptable to everyone of us, because it clearly shows the expenditure and interest which amounts to 25 per cent. of the gross revenue this year, which is more than it ought to be. I compliment the hon. member on that table, and hope it will be continued. I also comvliment him

Ways and Means. [5 AtrG1:"ST.] Ways and Means. 479

on the clear statement and exposition of the tables he has pla,cerl before us. I ,think there has been too little aclmowlr'dgment of the great labour and consideration he has manifested in putting the statement before us in "'eh a clear anr! able manner, and I feel that a word of praise and thallkil oul"ht to be offered to him, especially when thet·e has been so much of blame said with respect to the Treasurer\; proposal. Therefore, I have great pleasure in saying what I have said. The hon. gentleman has tried his hand at con::;tructing a nt>w table ; and seeing that imitation is the best flattery, I thought [ might as well construct a little t,),ble of rny O\VH

-which I have done. I constructed a f!mall table with the dew of ascertaining what has been the real expellditure of the GoYel·nrnent, irrespecthe of the loan expenditnre-1 think that is a very pertinent and pr :ctical way of }JUtting it, l1ecau~e we are told tltat it is the loan expenditure that is killing· the colony. Now let n~ see how \VG stand as regards general expenditure. I ma:' say that I preparu<l this table from the fig-ures contained in the tahles K and R in the Tree~snrer's Ste~tement. I have made them up for the ]a,t ten yeccrs, but there is no occasion to give all the figures; and I shall begin with the last year the Grilfith Govermnc•ut 'vas in power, which was a 1nost unfavourable year to the1n, becuu~e it \Vas a year of flood and disaster. In 1881"-8 they spent £fl2,G71 in excess of the previous year.

The COLO::\"IAL TREASURgR (Hon. J. Donaldwll) : Departmental expenditure?

Mr. UJ\':\TACK : The gross expenditure from t:tbles K and R. I have called my table the XS table.

The COLOKIAL TREASURER: Will the hon. gentleman give the tot.·Js in each year?

Mr. UN"J\IACK: In 1837-8 the total expendi­ture was £3,368,883, the total loan interest paid was £GG3,54G, and the net expenditure was £2,705,337, shnwing an excess over the previous year of £92,G71. £29,000 of that was for repairs from floods, and the D<trra accident accounted for £20,000 of it, so that in round numbers we mav say- it includes extraordinary e'<penditure ,;f £30,000. Then the next year the present Go­vernn1ent ca1ne into power. The gro:ss expendi­ture was £3,-197,80:>, the loan interr 00'.t £711,723, and the net expenditure £2,786,082, which gives an exces~ of expfmJiture over the previon.s year of the Griffith G"vernment-which includes, DS I have sa.id, £.30,000 for extraordinary expenditure -of £80,7·15. That is the excess of expendi­ture for the first year, which has been caused by the Ministry who can1e in as the great financiers, the men who would do everything just with a we,·e of the wand -the men who went up hill and down dale to repre'~'ent the Griffith Government as the most incapable men to manage the finances of the country, and men who were wasteful and ex­travagant, and could not do anything. That was their election cry, and yet they come . into power and spend £80,7 45 more th<tn their predecessors. Now we come to last year. The gross expendi­ture was £3,G05, 774, the loan interest £828,5G5, and the net expenditure £2,8G7,20U, or a further excess of £81,127. In other words, £1 G1,COO h<ts been speut more than was spent by the Griffith Government. Now we co1ne to thiH yc•ar, and as I have shown there is a total excess of expen­diture over the expenditure of la~t year of £120,000, which makes the total exce"s of expen­diture over the l,.st year of the GritHth Govern­ment of £281,000. This is what the present Government are spending more than the bad financiers, the wasteful and extravagant Liberal party, spent in the hut year they held of!lce. Let me ask, has there been any cause whatever

shown for any extra expenditure of this kind? Has there been any re>Lson or anything to warrant such an extra expenditure?

The COLONIAL TREASURER: Yes. Mr. UNi\lACK : I say no. I do not know of

any, excrpt that there has been £30,000 or £40,000 spent in additiunal railway repairs this Ja.~t season to rnake np for dmnnge done by the floods. And this extra expenditure of £281,000 ba.s l1een incurred in the face of a. falliug reYt'-llU€1.

and in the face of l1ad tiuW'1, '>\hen bu:-~ine3s rnen ''"onld ha Ye curt ,iJecl their expenses in every form ; but instead of that the expenditure has been increa.~Pd year after year, 'Yithout any en use whatever. \Yhen I find such an extraordinary expenditure, I cmne to lnquire what can be the cauRe of it, and I have found variouB C<'tnses. Some of them I slull nwntwn, and, in the first instance, 've come to the new n,pJ~nintments the Govern went hnve made f.:.ince they entered into office. A~ ha,; been shown by the hon. m em her for \Vide Bay-although the return he called for on the subject has been denied, yet within an hour and a-half he made up the return for himself which he asked for six weeks ago-and from the return he made out in detail, he showed whil.st they were not all new appointments, many of them were appointments of men who never ought to have been put iuto the service.

The PREMIEH: That is not true. Mr. UN:\IACK : If the Premier says it is not

trne, then the Blue Book is incorrect, because those returns have been taken from the Blue Book. I defy the hon. wernber to prove that it is nol true. 1 ~ay it i:--; true, and n1y word is as grrod as his. There is the Blne Book, and if the hon. gentleman wants m3 to do so, I shall read tlmmgh the whole Ji,t and show him what dummy na1nes there are among:',t them-Rome nan1es that should ne1 er ha\ c been allowed t,J enter the Government service. I do not like to be taxed with makillg statements that are not true. I say those statements are taken from the Blue Book.

The PREMIER: Quite so. :\lr. UNMACK: Quite so. How dare the

hon. gentlem<tn tell me I am telling an untruth? I say it is true, unless the Blue Book lie, .. Those apl;ointlnents, accnrding to the hon. 1nember for \Vide Ba~-, acconnt for £47,000 about. I have no hesitation in saying· that at least two-thirds, or, to be very moderate, one-half, of them should never lmve been made, because if the Government had lwen inclined to lJe economical, one-half might ha,~e been drawn from other departments of the service which are now overmanned. Thus I accuse them in this one direction of having saddled the country with at least £22,000 or £23,000 per annum of unnecessary expenditure. Hon. members opposite may attempt to disprove that if they choose, and they will find plenty on this side ready all<! willing to meet them. The next thing I charge thern with is, with having unnecec.sarily charged the country with cer­tain pem.ions. From the day they went into office until now the vote for pensions has been increased by £4,113, and some of those pen­sions are entirely unvvarranted, unnec8ssary, and unneeded. Anrl, by-the-by, while I am on this ··ubject, I would like to say I think it is time the Auditor-Geneml was hauled over the cnah; by this House. ·what is he about? I have read his litst annunl report, and I see no mention in it of these illegal pensions. They were n1entioned last year, and the Govern1nent promised to lJring in an Indemnity Bill dealing with them. They ha,·e not done so yet, and still there is no word about it in the Auditor-General's report. He ought to be called npon to give a rer,ort of himself to the House.

480 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

Then some divisional ho>trd allow>tnces have been p>tid without the slightest sanction from the House.

An HONOURABLE NlEiiiBER: Schedules. Mr. U Sl\IACK: I know the amonnts have

been j'Ht down in the schedules. bnt as the leader of the Opposition ha~ alr~~tdy E<hown, they ha.\·e no busine"s to be there. They h,we l>een ]mid, and I say a Bill of indemnity ,;hnuld he bronght in dealing with those payments also. Let me just mention a few of these pensinns. Some of these g("ntle· men pensioned off-I do not know \\hy-are walkir>g about our street.s sorry they have no work to do, and are as well able to do work as >tny member of this House. :\1 r. :Frank Cnnww, late Cornrnis:->inner for Rnih\ ays, is now s~tddled on the country with £507 a year. \V hat fur? That gentlem>tn is as abl" to work as any one of us, and we all know it. He lm3 not reach er! the age at which he would he entitled to a rwnsion, and yet here he is on the pen,inn list; and nothing said about it. It is the dictum of tl,e Governn1ent : '"Pension that 1nan off," and there's an end to it. Here is another-Mr. Deighton. He has been dismis ,ed, and thongh under t1-,1e age, pensinnPd off, and is a charge upon the country to the extent uf £430. He is per· fectly willing and anxious to work, but he has been told to go. Then comes :Mr. Drew, and I ask what occasion is there to gi Ye :i'IIr. Drew a pension of £2~0?

The P RE:\IIER: The Houses of Parliament gave it to him.

Mr. UN11ACK : Yes ; the Houses of Parlia· ment gave it to him. The Government have a big majority at their back, and that is what they call the Houses of Parliament. It is like the Colonial Secret;,ry shifting the blame of the tariff on to the shoulders of the Hon. Sir T. Mcllwraith. Now they try to shift the blame for this on to the Houses of Parliament. Does anyone think that if the Government had not insisted on this it would have been carried? There are some others that could have been dis· pensed with, but enough has been said to illus­trate the way in which money has been wasted. I had nearly forgotten that I have a word to say to the hon. member for Iviackay. He is present, and knows what I am going to say, for I told it to him. That hem. mew her told us the other night that he did not think it possible to econo­mise in the Civil Service. He say>:-

"I myself was led to fnrm expectations, which were subsequently disappointed, by a report which was brought up by the hon. member for Toowong, in which he stated that a Yery large snm of money could be saved even in one department, the Depa~.tment of Public Instruction. I forget ho\v much it was, but I remember it wa5 many thouFJIHls or pounds. Knowin~~ that hon. memher t0 be a shrewd business man, I thought it po~sible. from that report, hrgely to reduce the expense of the Government departments. l~nt the leader of the Oppo~ition {tnite agreed with the Govern­ment that it \Vas not possible to effect this great economy in the Education DC£)artment."

I think the hon. me m her before making a state· ment of that kind shonld have provided himself with the facts, aBd shonld at least have known what he was talking about. The fact of the matter is that the report brought up by that Commission had the effect of saving somewhere about £20,000 in that department alone during the first year the Government were in office. In consequence of that report the Treasury bene­fited to that extent in the conduct cf one depart­ment. I may tell the hon. gentlem>tn that I am now analysing the l>tst report from that depart­ment, and though I have not finished my analysis of it, I find that the saving this year has been as much, if not gren,ter, than last year. Therefore, had it not been for the lab•mr3 of that Commission the deficit would now be some

£40.000 greater than it i>'. That is an answer to the ·hon. member for Mncka,-, and I may, I think, assume that had the searching inqnirieti of that Cmnn1is:;;ion bern continuPd in ~ome of the other departmentR, a cnnsider,;ble saving might al.'o have ]Jeen effected in connection with them. Now we come to the next Rubject on which I know public opinion is very ~trong indeed, and which I call wilful "aRt.e and wanton ex­tra vag-rrnce, aud that iR the vote for the Defence l<'orce put clown on this occasion. It is extraordinary wbat a difference it sPems to n1ake to hase ·hon. mentbers sit on one side or on the other. In 1887 the leader of the present Oppo~ition waR in 1H'wer, and be vropo~ed a. vote of £50.287 for the Defence Force, and none were stronger in their opposition to that vote than the pr<·sent occu1 •ants of the Treasury benches. It took se,·eral nights to discu,;s the vote, and the then Premier merrier! his pro­po,cal hy a majorit,, of one only. \V hat. do we find when these gentlemen OJ•posite get into JDWcr? In the vf'ry next year they proposed an increase of £10,2ii8 in the vote; last year they propo>ed a further increase-making the vote £67,196-and this yen,r they really have the audacity to come down and ask us to give them £73,835. for the Defence :Force, after h>t>'ing spent £11,000 from the Loan :Fund unauthorised.

The COLONIAL TREASURER: The actual ammmt expended in 1887 was £71,431.

The HoN. Sm S. W. GRIF:FITH: £25,000 was transferred from loan.

l\1r. UNMACK: Very likely. There has been expenditure upon the vote from the Loan :Fund every year. This year we are asked for £73,833 on the Estimates, and in addition to that there is a sum of £2,500 or £3,000 for drill &heels and buildings. I would ask what have we got for this vote for the blessed Defence :Force? What >tre they for?

The PREMIER: To prepare ourselves against the Germans.

Mr. UNMACK : I am glad to hear it, >tnd the Premier will find, should the Germans come upon us, that though I am not a memher of the Defence :Force I shall be willing to enter the ranks to fight against them. This is my adopted country, and I shall be ready, should occasion arise, to take a musket in hand to defend it, for I am a Queenslander. Now, Sir, what have we got in this Defence :Force? vVe are creating a military caste here which it is most undesirable we should have. \Vh:>t have we got? A lot of gold lace, cocked hats, and feathers, and not satisfied with that they lately added Tassels to them.

HoxouruBLE 1'1Eo!BERS : Hear, hear ! Mr. U:\TJ\IACK: I say do away with them.

\Ve do not want them. But I say encourage in every shape and form our volunteer system. By doing so you will train up our youths to he manly, and upright, >tnd obedient to discipline, and thereby: benefit the country in every w>ty. vVhatever money is spent in th"t direction will be well spent. I c~ay clo away with the present expensive staff and Permanent Defence :Force. \V e do not want them. The Hon. the Premier is always very sweet and ple01sant when he is get­ting his Estimates throu!;'h ; he has been very succes-•ful in that respect during the last two sessions, hut I can promise him that he will have a little more trouble this time. I know that a great deal of opposition will be shown to those Est1mates. Then there is a considerable increase in the item of buildings for the Education Department. They may be required or they may not, hut in the present state of the finances I think a good deal of that vote might be dis­pensed with. There is also a vote down for a

Ways and Means. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and Means. 481

training college for teachers, but considering that last year a paltry sum was refused for starting an institution of much more importance, in which our youth might have the benefit,; of a university education, I think that might be deferred. Another item that might be left out is £5,000 for additions to this building. I ask, are we justified in passing such a vote? I s~rongly opposed the expenditure for the ad­ditions to the Parliamentary huildings l1ecause the country could not afford it. It is a luxury. The accommodation we hotve is quite good enough ; but I was told that the money had been voted, that it was loan money, and it might as well be spent and afford labonr for the people. But, Sir, this year we are asked for another ~!5,000 from the consolidated revenue, and I say 1t should not be granted. If it is \Yanted let it be wanted-let it stand over. The-re is not the slightest occasion for it. Now I come to an item which I consider the most disgraceful in the whole lot. I think it is a degrading idea that the Government of the day should introduce such a measure, and it is more degrading still that they should now propose to continue it. I am referring to payment of members. I am one of those who voted against payment of mem­bers, and I especially voted against payment of members being made applicable to this Parlia­ment. I said there might be some excuse for passing a measure making the system apply to the next Parliament, and instE-;vi of having the indecency to- vote money to go into our own pockets in the face of a heavy defi1•-iency m the revenue. I bold that it should not have been gra-nted.' I do trust that the Govern­ment will bring in a Bill to repeal it, or at all events to suspend the operation of the Act for five years to come. That in itself will save us £100,000, and I shall be glad to support any such proposition. I now come to a matter which costs the colony some money, and to which I have before alluded twice when the Estimates were under consideration. That is the maintenance of artesian wells. The Trea­surer told ns in his Statement-

" Several tanks and dams have also beAn constructed• which will have the effect of opening up roads, and making them passable in all seasons for travt'llers. teamsters. and stock. In connection with this matter I wish to note t.hn,t the cost of caretakers of bores and dams now reaches a considerable sum of money above the receipts obtained, and it is mv intention as soon as possible to make arrangements· for leasing all these works, so that they shall not be a further charge upon the revenue.''

Now, two years ago and last year as well, I said to the Government: If you have been successful in sinking a bore anywhere, make the divisional boards concerned take it over. If you cann0t do it, pass an Act to enable you to do it. Who p>tys for the waterworks in the settled districts? The m unici pali ties.

Mr. PHILP: No; not always.

Mr. UNMACK: Ye~.

Mr. PHILP : Brisbane has not paid its first loan yet.

Mr. UNMACK: It is paying it off by its r"tes. I said this two year., ago : Let the country bear all the expense of any unsuccessful bores, but the moment you bore and get water in a district, at once get rid of it; hand it over to the local bodies c.mcerned and let them maintain it. Why should the country pay men to look after these bores and sell a cask or a bucket of water1? Last year we employed twenty-two men for this purpose, and paid them £4,212, and this year we are asked to supply forty-three and to pay them £5,350 to retail water. It is perfectly ridiculous, and I

1890--2 H

say that money ought to be saved. There are thousands and thousands of ponnds spent in this way and nobody knows where it has gone. Can anyone wonder with these facts before them that the expenditure is £280,000 more than what it was in the last year of the Griffith Government? I, Sir, have come to this conclusion: That :ve do not want larger revenue, but we reqmre smaller expenditure. 'l'hat is the direction in which we have to go. Taking all these things into consideration, I say the amendment of the hon. the leader of the Opposition, which is in general terms, "that the financial proposals of the Government are not satisfactory to the House," is quite justified. I am not going to follow the reasoning of the hon. member for Herbert, Mr. Cowley, and say that some part of these proposals is ,atisfactory, but other parts are not, and "I shall vote against the amend­ment, and I shall vote against the property tax." The proposals are satisfactory or they are not. You cannot separate them. I say they are unsatisfactory; and quite apart from the pro­posed property tax, I hold that I shonld be fully justified, after the explanation I have given, in voting in favour of the amendment. The Treasurer, in his opening remarks, when speak­ing about the decrea,se in re>enue, said:--

" Thf're is another reason that should not be lost sight of. an1 that is that importers, fearing an increase ol duty in 1887 and lsgs, imported very largely, which caused them to hold stocks much in excess of the average. Therefore. when dulness of trade set in. more than a year ago, thf'y withhPld sending orders for large supplies, which affected Customs returns to a great extent.''

Now, 11r. Speaker, no one ought to know better than the Colonial Treasurer, who is a shrewd 1nan of business. that this statement id eutirely unfounded. In the year 1887-8, in1· porters did not anticipate any increase in the tariff, because that was the time of the general election. The election cry was, "no increased taxation ; but good management and economy; drive ont these wasteful fellows and take us in, and you will find all we have to do is to wave our band and you will have a big loaf," and they carried a big loaf beside a little one through the streets. It would be a happy thought, talking about loaves, to send th~tt big loaf beside the little loaf about the streets again. The only difference would be to change the names, and put the Morehead party's name on the small one, and the Griffith party's name on

, the large one. That statement, at all events, was n0t correct, because as I "aid, im­y,orters knew and felt that there was to be no extra taxation. They were told so, and how could they be prepared six months beforehand to increase their imports? Not at all. The cause must be looked for in another direction altogether. The cause of the fulling off was this : that the tariff was so frightfully oppressive that the con­sumption fell off. The ma,ses had to stint them­selves and go without many luxuries and com­forts which they had previously enjoyed, because their cost of living had been increased week by week. That is one of the causes, and I think I am not far wrong in giving another cause, which was that the anticipated revenue had been over­estimated. That is another view to take of it, and I am not at all sure that I am wrong.

Mr. HODGKINSON: It was over-estimated this year.

11r. UNMACK: I am of the same opinion. I believe those were the causes, and not the cause that the Treasurer has given us. The Treasurer then congratulates hi1nself upon the success­ful floating of the loan. I have already spoken upon that subject in the debate on the Address in Reply, and I say that he

482 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

is entirely unwarranted in congratulating him­self upon that account. We lost a large sum of money by the floating of that loan, which was placed at an inopportune moment, and upon bad advice. On the day before tbis ban was placed on the market, Cape Colony, a colony not n8!~rly in as good a position as Queensland, floated a loan at £100 3s. 6d., or at a premium of 3s. Gd., and we floated ours at £97 16s. or there­abouts. It is monstrous. No one can congratu­late himself upon such a piece of business as this. I say that it was throwing money away.

The COLONIAL TREASURER: You expected it would have brought less.

Mr. UNMACK: I expected that it would have brought par, at any rate.

The PREMIER: No you did not.

Mr. UNMACK: The Premier is exceedingly polite to me to-night. This is the second time he has been most polite. I thank him for his eourtesy, and shall not retaliate upon a future occasion, because I do not believe in these things. I thmk the Premier might give me a fair show to say what I wish. When I say that I did believe a certain price was to be obtained, I think it is ill·arlvised and discourteous to say "No you did not."

The PREMIER : I have no intention of being discourteous, but I know, as well as the hon. member does, that he was one of those wh0 tendered at a lower rate than the loan reached.

Mr. UNMACK: I am exceedingly pleased to hear tloat I tendered for the loan. I am glad that I am thought to be one of those blo.>ted capitalists, able to tender for a loan. I can give you my word of honour, Mr. Speaker, that the hon. gentleman is entirely out in his reckoning. I am pleased to think, howe,·er, that he gives me credit for so much wealth. I never thought I was in that position.

The PREMIER : If the hon. gentleman will allow me to explain, either he, or those with whom he is interested, tendered at a less price than the loan reached. Those are my words.

Mr. UNMACK : In reference to the very kindly advice that was given by the Treasurer in reference to the future construction of rail­ways, I tender him my most cordial thanks, and I shall tell him this, t.hat his words are deeply engraven on my heart, and I shall remember them when he brings in his new lines. I shall remember them most particularly, and shall weigh all he said in that direction, because I approve of it. \V e are promised, I believe, sixteen new lines and several more. Well, I am very much afraid if it depends upon my vote to carry them, that we shall get very few.

The COLONIAL TREASURER: We will get one of them.

Mr. UNMACK : Not one if I can help it.

The MINISTER FOR RAILWAYS (Hon. H. M. Nelson): Does it not go the right route?

Mr. UNM.ACK: The Treasurer's estimate of Customs receipts is, in my opinion, fairly correct; but I must say this, and I say it without hesita­tion or fear, that if this property tax be carried, then the Customs receipts are very much over­stated, because he will find that if he grinds down the people in the way he proposes with taxes, the consumption will be less, and the population will decrease. There is not the smallest doubt about that. The railway receipts, Mr. Speaker, are, in my opinion, so heavily overst~J.ted that I cannot see the sm!!l!est chance

of the department receiving the money put down for them. Certainly the Colonial Trc~1tsurer has given no explanation as to why he should have put down this heavy increase. I trust for the country's sake that his anticipations will be realised ; but I fear there is a great mistake made, as in the previous year's Estimates. That is what will run the country into debt, because it will not be realised. Another very important subject is the endowments to divisional boards. I have a great deal to say upon that, and I have some figures here that may possibly startle hon. mem­bers. The first r'lason the hon. Treasurer gives is that he has decided to continue the £2 to £1 endowment, because Sir T. Mci!wraith and himself promised it. That is a very sound state­ment in one effect. But I ask this : What right had they to promise anything of the wrt, and what right was there under the existing circum­stances ? I say this, first of all, that in the year 1887·8 the then Colonial Treasurer, Mr. Dickson I Lelieve it was, stated in this House that the ex­cessive drain upon the finance" of the colony in conse<J.nencB of the endowment was such that it disarranged the finances, and it could not con­tinue without some restrictions being put upon it. The consequence was that an Act was pas8ed limiting the amount to £165,000 or £170,000 for two years. That was the maxi­mum which was to be proportionately divided amongst the divisional boards. I say that at that time I was of opinion that the notice given to the divisional hoards in so sud­denly reducing their endowment was too short. Therefore I am free to say that I am not going to blame the Government. for having pain the endowment during the last two years. I think tlmt was a fair and reasonable thing; but I say this: The divioional boards had warning in 1887. They have ever since then, as I shall prove by figures, prepared themselves to meet the change, and they are now in a position to do with less. Therefore I say I can see no reason of any kind why the endowment should be continued. The second reason given by the Treasmer is one which I shall read, because I do not wish to misquote him. He says-

" I propose t6 give to local bodies this year £265,000, an amount not much in exce-.;s of what they received last year. But we must bear in mind that they are the largest employers of labour at; present in the colony. The whole of that £2f:5,000, with some additions to it, will be R-llent amongst the labonl'ing classes, and not in one part of the colony, but all over it. 1iVhat would be the effect on the working classes if that endowment was withdra\vn r ·would it not end most disastroush? If we had withdrawn that endo\vment, I could have Shown a surplus of £30,t,OO. But to withdraw it would be to throw the country into a state of confusinn. There is not sufficient employment. and I am sure that hon gentle­men will agree with me there-there ls not sufficient employment in the country now, apart fron1 these local bodies, that can be made for the people, and a large number more would be thrown on the labour market. I want to see the people kept employed, and for that reason I am anxious to enable divisional boards and munieipalities to get this endmvment of about £26.3,000 amongst them; knowing that the money will be well spent, and spent in giving employment."

Now, Sir, I am bound to say that if eYer there was a sop thrown out to the working people this is one. If ever there was any bid for popularity this is one, and I will say this, that while I am satisfied of the thorough integrity of the Treasurer, I believe he is in entire ignorance of the facts. I will prove it by figures, and I am certain that he is an honourable man, and that he will acknowledge the proof that I give· him. Talkin[{ about a bid for popularity, there is another little speech of the 'Treasurer's which I will refer to. The hon. gentleman afforded himself the pleasure of speaking at a public meeting last night, and I will first read the con­cluding part of his speech. He gave the same

Ways and Means. [5 AUGUST.] Ways and Means. 483

facts that he gave to the House, but added a few beautiful little adornments to it. He told the people of South Brisbane this:-

"He could assure them that Brisbane with its general rates did not more than pay- the officers and the interest on the loans. South Brisbane would not be able to pay its office rent and officers. and would not have a shilling to spend on the roads. They 'vere entirely dependent on the endowment." Was there ever a greater insult offered to the people of South Brisbane than by such a state· ment as that? It is an insult to the intelligence of the people to think that they would suffer if the divisional boards did not get £2 for £1. Now, I have here statements from official sources which are accessible to hon. gentlemen. I shall show, in the first instance, a list of divisional boards, showing what the Govern­ment endowment they received amountec! to. I am now disputing the assertion that this money was spent on public works. I will show what Governmel!t endowment certain rlivi­sional boards received, and how much they spent last year on public works. I shall next show what rates and incomes the several boards have had, and how much of that they have spent in public works. I shall next show what endow­ment certain boards have had, and how much, in addition to their own money, they have spent ; and lastly, I shall show-and this will prove specially interesting to the Colonial Treasurer and to colonists generally-that there are certain divisional bo:trds in this colony who are not only defraying the whole of · their expenses, i.JCluding repayment of loans anrl even salarieR, out of Government money, but who have pocketed several hnndred pounJs of Go­vernment money l1esideR. If after that the Colonial Treasurer can still assert that he is compelled to give £2 for £1, the sooner we get rid of such a Treasurer the better. That is perfectly plain.

Name of Divisional Board.

Barolin Bulimba Calliope Clifton Inglewood ::: Johnstone ... Paroo Peak Downs· Southport ... Ula Ula Waggamba::: Croydon

'

...

:::I ...

Government Endowment,

1889.

£ 1,0t6 ~.375 1,11 16 2,911) 1,127 1,981 1,612

433 2,095 1,274

600 1,206

Expenditure on Public

Worl<s, 1889.

£ 484

1,773 998

2,(153 :1.16

1,216 985 88

1,329 631 52 75

Now I will not give the names of any more. The COLONIAL TREASURER: How

much do they pay as interest on loans ? Mr. UNMACK: 'rhis is for public works,

the Colonial Treasurer has told us, so that employment might be found for the people of the. colony. I may mention that altogether­omitting municipalities and shires - there are 38 out of 106 in the same position. I will now give the names of other boards that are in the same position, but will omit the figures :-Bauhinia, Belyando, Broadsound, Burke, Cardwell, Highfields, Isis, Ki>1nawah, Kolan, JYiurilla, Mnrweh, Stanthoq,e, Tambo, Tarampa, Tiaro, TingalJ a, Torres, \Valloon, Warroo, Wintnn. Now I come to the muni­cipalities that are in the same position ; and the municipalities in the same position are­Elackall, Dalby, Hughenden, Mackay, North Rockhampton. There is also the shire of Middle Ridge. That completes this lot ; and they spend a very small proportion of the Government money

they receive upon the whole of their publie works. Now I will show the incomes received by some of the divisional boards and how much they have spent on public works:-

Name of Divisional Board.

Adavale Burke Croydon Duaringa Inglewood Kiana\vah Kilki\'an Rednliffe l\osentha1 ... rrorr~s

t:la Ul \'Faggamba::. 1Varroo ,,~in ton

... I ...

... ,

General and Special R>ttes and Income,

1889.

£ 600 660 918 119 430

1,350 1,653 2,549 1,201)

2!}] 732 19:) 31H 929

Expenditure on

Public Works, 1889.

£ 112 635 75

135 336

1,082 1,372 2,255

30 247 631 52

329 420

I will show you now the amount of Government endowment, and the amount they have expended in addition to the Government endowment. The two amounts together will make up their total expenditure:-

~ame or Divisional Board.

Barnlin Banhinia Br0adsound Burke Calli ope O:udwell ... Is is Rosalie South port ... Tarampa \Yinton

I Expenditure ~overnment in addition to Endowment. Endowment,

1889. 1~89.

-----1----£

1,046 506 677 F-38

1,106 967

1,G47 1,153 2.095 1,738

648

£ 276 226 124 84

136 77

228 297 380 370 285

Now we come to the last, and I must say that though we often hear ah<~ut the cuteness of the Yankee, this will show that there are people who can heat all the Yankees in cn1ation--that these boards, in fact, live entirely on the rest nf the colonists, and pocket a few hundreds besides. In the first column is the Government endow­ment paid in 1889, and in the next is the total ex pencliture for the same year, including salaries, office rent, redemption of loan, and every other conceivable charge to which they are put:-

Name of Divisional Board.

Arnmac Clifton Croydon Ingiewood t.iurilla Ula Ula Walloon vrarroo

Government Endowment

Paid in 1889.

£ 2,737 2,910 1,206 1,127

385 1,274 1,511

873

Total Expendi­ture in 1889,

including Loan Redemption.

£ 2,418 2.781 1,020 1,103

270 1,066 1,471

548

I have read the names of eight boards whose total expenditure doe' not amount in any case to what they get from the Government by a con­siderable sum ; and everything else they could have collected themselves is to the good. vVhere, then, is the necessity for increasing or even continuing their endowment 1

48J. Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Wa,1;s and Means.

The COLONIAL TREASURER :What year do those figures relate to?

Mr. UNMACK : The year 1889. They are from the statistics available to every hon. member. It cost me a good deal of labour to take them out, but I think that labour has been well repaid, because when we see such a disgraceful state of a:lfairs-people sponging and loafing on their fellow colo­nists-it is time it was stopped. Where is the occasion for continuing this endowment to give employment to people as stated by the Treasurer? I say that these people prefer to be fed with a silver spoon, but if they are thrown on their own resources they will economise more and pay greater attention to their wants, and be more likely to exhaust their own taxing power. A great many of them have not yet exhausted their taxing power.

Mr. HODGKINSON: If you had to pay 2s. 6d. per lb. for flour you would not want to pay much in the shape of taxes.

Mr. UNMACK: Even if the people in some places have to do that, it is no reason why the rest of the people of the colony should pay towards their divisional boards. There are ten divisional boards who only tax themselves up to 9d. in the £1; thirteen up to 6d. in the £1 ; and three who only tax themselves up to 4d. in the £1.

Mr. COWLEY: In what part of the colony? Mr. UNMACK: I will give you the names of

some of them. There is Bauhinia 6d., Clifton 9d., Highfields 9d., Muri!la 6d., Paroo 9d., Maytown 6d., Tarampa 4d., Ula Ula 6d., Waggarnba 4d., vVarroo 6cl., and vVinton 9d. Those are the only ones I have here, but hem. members can find out in the statistics many others. Then there is another thing. Has any human being any idea of what amount of money the divisional boards spend in salaries? I shall give them a little wrinkle about it, because I take great pleasure in wading through these figures when I find I am on the scent, just the htme as I was elsewhere ; and I may state that the united divisional boards rates amount to £93,000, but I venture to say that no hon. member, unless he knows, can give a guess as to what amount they pay away for salaries. The salaries amount to £31,000 or 33J; per cent. What establishment could stand that? vVhat is the cause ot it? Because they are spoon fed. \Ve are giving them our hard-earned money, and we are called upon to tax ourselves with a villainous tax in order to shove it down the throats of these sharks who are sponging upon their neighbours. The sooner ;ve abolish such a system the better. New Zealand has been quoted right through the debate, and I shall quote New Zealand in reference to municipalities. I was there on a pleasure trip, and I picked up a little information, and amongst other things I picked up information about municipalities and their endowments. I found that the people were formerly in exactly the same difficulty that we are now in-that the boards swal­lowed up everything, and that they were driving the finances into a corner. The result was that an Act was introduced which has gradually reduced the endowments, and now they only get an endowment of 5s. in the £1. \V e should do the same thing here without fear. Having said all this, I think I am also entitled to suggest the way in which I think this monetary difficulty can be met without putting on this property tax at all. I suppose, as I am on the wrong side of the House, that my proposals will be called ridiculous nonsense, but I shall offer my remedy all the same. I suggest that the endowments for the future should be reduced to £1 for divisional boards and 10s. for munici­palities; and I would further :suggest that the

Act should contain a clause to provide that in another year or two we should fix the endowment, as in New Zealand, at 10s. for divisional boards and 5s. for muni­cipalities ; but I only confine myself at present to the first proposal, and to reducing instead of increasing the endowments. I would reduce them £1 to £1 for divisional boards, and 10s. for municipalities. In addition to this I would, if it were necessary, give the divisional boards and municipalities power to impose extra taxation, and by that means we should gain. The expendi­ture on the basis of £2 for £1 for last year was £296,000, and by having an endowment of £1 for £1 we should save £148,000, and we should knock off that amount of expenditure to begin with. I would give them power to impose additional taxation, and I am sure that would be more acceptable to the people than for the Go­vernment to tax the same property twice. There are a great many divisional boards and munici­palities which would not tax their residents for another amount, because they do not require it evidently, when they are storing up the money as I have shown; and therefore it would be far better to tell the various bodies that we cannot afford to give them the present endowment any longer, but that we will give them half what they now have-that is £1 to divisional boards and 10s. to municipalities-and if they wish to tax themselves more we will give them power to do so. That would save £148,000. Then the spirit and beer and excise duties -which I quite approve of-the Treasurer esti­mates £92,000 from them. vVell, that with the £148,000 I have mentioned would make £240,000. In addition to that, I should do as they did in New Zealand only a month or six weeks ago. The Ol'Position there were dissatis­fied with the proposals of the Government, and they said, "Take back your Estimates. We are not going to dictate to you where you are to take anything off, but take them back and knock off £50,000 where you like, and thetl bring them forward again." That was carried, and the Government are to re-introduce their Estimates with a reduction of £50,000. Now, there is ex­travagant waste in many matters, and though I do not wish to dictate to the Government in any one direction, I would greatly like to see the Estimates reduced by £50,000 or £60,000, which can easily be knoclmd off. Well, this sum, together with the £240,000, would amount to £300,000. Now, there is £300,000 I am provid­ing for the Government, and what do they ex· pect to get by this tax? The Treasurer has told us he expects to get £250,000. \V ell, expecta­tions, especially in the first year, are often dis­appointments, but they expect to get £250,000, and the Treasurer says the cost of collection will be 10 per cent. I fancy it will cost more than that, because in New Zealand it costs £30,000, and in that case it will cost about £50,000 here because our population is a great deal more scattered ; but I am content to put it at £30,000, so that the net revenue from this property tax will be £220,000, and instead of that I give him £300,000. lt is perfectly clear to my mind that we do not want a property tax, and Ibelievethegeneral public will agree with me when they read my statement in Hansard. There is £300,000 clear for the Government, and they only expect to get £220,000 net from their obnoxious property tax. The Colonial Treasurer said no one was anxious or willing to give him any assistance or advice. Well, I admit it is not the province of members of the Opposition to do so, but in such a qnestion as this we should not stand on party lines, 11nd I offer my advice to the hon. gentlemen. If it is not acceptable-and I do not suppose it is-at any rate let the country judge between us, I say,

"Wirys and Means. [5 AuGusT.] Ways and :Means. 485

" Here is £300,000 for you, if you like to take it, whereas you only expect £220,000 from this tax." There is a way out of the difficulty, and there is not the least trouble connected with it. \Vhen the Governor's Speech was read it was full of hope and expectation from one end to the other, and we can surely expe.ct some slight improvement in general affairs will take place ; and when I have shown that the money is available, why will the Government not take it? I have just a few words to say in reference to this property tax. I say it is fraught with extreme danger to our colonists, because I consider it op­posed to the best interests of the masses to put on such a tax as this in the preeent times of depres­sion, when we are still suffering from drought and flood, and with every commercial enterprise trampled under foot, and when people are just beginning to see a little daylight ahead of them. To impose such a tax as this, at such a time, when the object for which it is to he imposed could be effected by reduced expenditure, is abso­lutely cruel and unwarranted. I c"nnot find words sufficient to express myself on the subject. Every industry will be injmiously affected by it, and every class-the pastoralist, the agriCul­turiat, the merchant, a.nr! the labourer. Every one of them will suffer if such an iniqui­tous tax is imposed. It will drive people from this colony. The tax is wrong in principle be­cause 1t tn,xes improvements. It stops enter­prise in every direction. It 'will lessen labour, it will reduce the number of buildings going up, it will increase the cost of living, and it will in every way strangle our industries. It will even affect our great financial institutions. Take, for instance, our colonin,] banks. The Queensland National Bank and other institutions, how are they going to be treated? I will assume that this proposal will be upon the lines of theN ew Zealand Act, and, I think, I am justified in assuming that though we have not the Bill before us. We have three Queensland banking institutions-the Queensland N ationn,l Bank, the Royal Bank, and the Bank of NorthQueenslanr!­and what are we going to do with them? J udg­ing from the provisions in operation in New Zea­land, they will be taxed to the full value of their capital and reserve fund. That is the treatment meted out to banks whose chief offices are established in the colony. That seems very fair; and if we are going to tax capital in that form it is perfectly right. But what is going to be done with other banks, that is, foreign banks carrying on business in the colony, and trading in this colony, chiefly with local money? They ·are only to be taxed to the extent of one-eighth. That is the way in which in the New Zealand Act provision is inade for the taxation of banks, whose chief offices are established in places other than the colony. That is utterly unfair to the local institutions. Our local banks are to be fully charged on the whole of their capital and reserve fund, and these other banks are only to be taxed to the extent of one-eighth, and as some of them employ much larger sums here than the local banks, they will have a great deal less to pn,y. That is one of the effects that will follow these proposals. As for the proposal driving ea pi tal away, there is not the smallest doubt about that. I pledge my word for the correctness of what I am going to say, because it has come under my personal observation. I know that out of three different banks, since this proposal has been mooted, there has been over £40,000 of fix~d deposits withdmwn, and sent down to Sydney. I have been informed by others holding fixed deposits in the bank that it is their intention, as soon as the tax falls due, to remove their deposits out of the colony. I know, for a fact, that one party here, havmg a large sum of money in his hands for loan, and advertising it, has received

instructions to withdraw that money from the market. Does that not interfere with enter­prise? This proposal will check the development of our enterprise in every shape and form. Do we want to stifle everything, and put the last straw upon the backs of the working classes and ourselves?

Mr. STEVENSON: Upon yourselves, not upon the working classes.

Mr. UNMACK: I have already shown that a very high bid has been made to the work­ing classes in the shape of £250,000, to be spent on labour by divisional boards, and the other side have not much to crow about in that direction. The question of a general property tax, and the effect of it, has been so ably argued by the leader of the Opposition, and so clearly and emphatically laid down by the hon. member for Wide Bay and the hon. mem­ber for Toowoomba, that I need not say very much upon the subject. But as we had a great many authorities quoted, in order to substantiate a little more what they have said, I want to give you a very short qnotation from a very valuable authoritv on tttxation. Mr. McCullock says :-

" Besid;s being unfair, taxes on property have sundry practical consequences of the most mischievous kind. If a tax be laid on incon1e, it creates an inducement to conceal its amount; but it does not tempt any~ one to employ inferior instruments or processes in carrying on his employment. This, however, is the inevitable effect of taxes on property. They create a motive to elude their pressure, by underrating its amount, or employing it in some underhand manner. Those engaged in industrious occupations are tempted to carry them on with the least amount of capital. An indisposition is generated to make fresh outlays~.m works 01' improvements, seeing that it _will be taken as an evidence of increased wealth, and w1il con .. seq_uently expose the parties to additional taxation. 'J.1he object, under such circumstances, is not to appear rich, but to appear poor; and the reality too often corresponds with the appearance." \V e have heard of the failure in America of this system, and the figures from New Zealand prove a similar result to be taking place there. I know that it is quite impracticable for a valuator to get at the valuation of personal or in­tangible property, or even of reo,] property. Take, for instance, two farms adjoining each other. One may be highly cultivated by labour-saving appliances and the nse of arti­ficin,l manures at an enormous expen~e, and the other may be cultivated in the ordinary way by plough and spade and without any artificial manuring. How is a valuator to assess the value of those farms, when one may be worth ten times as much as the other. The con­sequence will be that the greater the improve­ments the greater the tax a man has to pay; that is not the way it should be. It is the pro­ductiveness of a property that should be taken into account, and not its apparent value. Some hon. members opposite have, in a very praise­worthy manner, done much to beautify this city by the erection of very large buildings, and some of them are standing empty and bringing in no return; yet, return or ,,10 return they have to pay the tax all the same; that is not a right principle. Thn,t is not treating them justly. See the effect it will have upon bbour. Take, for instance, the Tram Company. They have carried on bueiness for the last five years; they haYe lost a large amount of money ; they have never paid a dividend to the shareholders, and now they are to be called upon, in addition to their losses, to have their burdens increased by this tax.

The PREMIER : I am very glad to hear that is one of the reasons for the opposition.

Mr. UNMACK : I wieh it to be understood thn,t I have no interest in the Tramway Com­pany. I am not speaking from personal motives,

The PREMIER : I understand,

486 Ways and Means. [ASSEMBLY.] Ways and Means.

Mr. UNMACK: The Chief Secretary under­stands a wonderful lot-a great lot; but some­times he gets very dull, and it take' a good deal of hammering to make him understand.

The PREMIER : I understand about that company.

Mr. UNMACK : I do not know what he understands; nt any rate he does not seem to understar.d this tax, but we will take good c>tre that he shall understand it, and that he shall not get it whatever the resnlt of this amendment may be. As I have pointed out, the Tramway Company have lost a great deal, and now, when they have to bear this additional taxa­tion, what will be the result? The tax will ccmount to a considerable sum and it may have the effect of causing them to liquidate. If it has not that effect, it will certainly have this : It will make them turn round to their employes and say, " We cannot increase our passenger fares ; our only remedy is to reduce your wages "-just in the same way that shopkeepers and others will make their pur­chasers pay the tax. There is the danger to the working classes. Many other companies and industries will be affected in the same way. The Colonial Secretary always talks about the " un­earned increment." 'l'hat is :t benutiful cry that has taken with a lot of people. I heard the hon. member for Bundanba talking about it to-night, and I am going to talk about it; but I shall take good care to find out who is in possession of the unearned increment. Why, Sir, nearly the whole of the present property-holders have paid in cash for the unearned increment. They are not the original purchasers. If you can find the original purchasers, who bought land about the time I came here, thirty years ago, when you could buy an allotment in Queen street for about £150, and still hold it, I say by all means make him pay for the unearned increment; but what about those who have paid £500 and £600 a foot for property in Queen street? Are you going to tnx the unearned increment there? The unearned increment is all on the other leg there. If those people want to sell their pro­perty they cannot get anything like the money they gave for it. Where then, is the unearned increment? New South Wales and South Ans­tralia rejected similar proposals. I shall not detain the House very long about that; but wish to refer to a .,tatement made by the Colonial Secretary. That hon. gentleman, I may say, is in the habit of making most emphatic state­ments in this House, laying down the law in the most positive manner and in such a way as to convince the House of the truth of his assertions ; but as soon "'s I came to analyse this in my qniet moments I found that it came out altogether differently. Speaking about the property tax with regard to the prosperity of New Zealand, the hon. gentleman said:-

11 I beg the hon. gentleman's pardon, but it has not; and, so far from capital running away from New Zea­land, if those hon. gentlemen will take the trouble to read up the New Zealand statistics they will find that that country has been going ahead in spite of a property tax having been forced upon it. Capital will not leave the country.'' Hon. gentlemen on the Treasury benches are very fond of fetching up papers with reference to New Zealand and quoting a very nice lot of figures from them in favour of their proposals ; but I say that if the Colonial Secretary is sincere, and only wants to put the matter for­ward clearly and stmightforwardly, he should hnve given us some more of those figures. That he has forgotten to do, and I am going to take the liberty of supplying them, because when I was in New Zealand I got one of those papers, as luck would have it, and let us have a look at it, and we shall soon find out all about the

prosperity of that colony. The population there has increased very sligbtly; in 1886 it was 578,000. now it is something like 600,000. But whilst the population has increased the number of tax­payers has decreased. Is that a sign of pros­perity? Last year the owners of personal pro­perty numbered 65,806; in ]886 they were 57,000; th"'t is an increase of about 8,000. But let us see how these property holders stand.

The HoN. P. PERKINS : Are you going to keep us all night?

Mr. UNMACK: If the hon. gentleman is tired I sh:1,ll be quite delighted if he will go home. I shall not miss his company. I am in possession of the Chair, and I shall not be put down, because I have got common sense to talk, and common sense I will talk, unless the House is adjourned. In 1886 they had in New Zealand 20,782 persons who owned property less than £100. Last year they had 27,000-7,000 more. In 1886 they had 10,677 who owned property under £200; now they h~ve 11,866. In 1886 they had 5,646 who owned up to £300 worth, and they have got only 5,000 now. In 1886 they had 3,427 who owned up to £400; now they have 3,686. In 1886 they hDd 2,318 who owned up to £500; now they have 2,520. Of people who owned up to £700, they had 1,855 in 1886; now only 836. Surely that is a sign of decrea,ing prosperity. Then, again, you have the taxpayers of real and personal property. In 1886 there were 27,826; now there are 26,307; so th:tt the people are evidently poorer. In addition to that, people have evidently got more into debt. Mortgages have increased from £30,000,000 to £31,tl20,000.

The COLONIAL TREASURER: Is not that the other way?

Mr. UNMACK: I have not the figures for last year. I am Ljuoting from 1882 to 1885.

The COLO:'fiAL TREASURER Last year the amount was £30,502,000.

Mr. UNMA OK : Still that is more than in 1882. Of course you expect a colony to go ahearl. You do not expect it to stand still. What is the position in regard to real property? In the year 18fl5 it was valued at £116,000,000, and now it is valued at only £111,000,000. Those are figures that cannot be contradicted. I have in my hand a clipping from one of the most influential pf\persin Auckland, dated 12th July:-

"Why are we losing our population P Simply and solely because of the heavy taxation which is prevent~ ing the investment· of capital and the improvement of property. Nobody can give any other reason. The profuse loan expenditure has been stopped for some years, so that the exodus is not on that account. If, within the present month, the Parliament were to reduce the property tax. the exodus would be stopped as if by magic. The commissioner of the property tax, who naturally may be supposed to put things in the most favourable light for the tax, was compelled to admit, in his official statement, that the value of 'real property in the colony had decreaserl from £116,376,000 to £111,137,714, a decrease of £5,238,945.' This is the effect of the tax, which is simply killing tl!e goose that lays the golden eggs." I think we may fairly put down the decrease at £11,000,000, because in five years there ought to have been an incrt;ase of £5,000,000. So that £10,000,000 might fairly be taken off the value of real property. The same paper goes on to say:-

"We defy any statistician to show a parallel case in modern times. In an old country like England, which has been filled with capital and population for centuries~ and where every avenue of expenditure has been thoroughly exploited, the increase of wealth every year can be counted by millions. Here are 600,000 people in a new country, with millions of fertile acres lying untilled, with abundant natural resources not utilised, and yet we have toiled for three years, and the sum total of our wealth has decreased. Such a result is a shame and a disg1•ace to out rulers. n

Ways and Means. [5 AuGusT.] Ways and Means. 487

Are we to fasten such an incubus up0n the people here? I hope not, and I hope the time is far distant when we shall have anything of the sort. An attempt has been made to. dmw Ministers in this rest•ect, but they have w1thheld the inf0rmation; upon whom does this t~~ chiefly fall? It has been argued tha~ the C~lBt burden of the tax falls upon the agrwultunst. The Government have the papers, but they have never given us the information. I will tell the House whom it falls upon. In 1886 inN ew Zealand there were27,826 paying the tax, 9, 7 47Qfthos~ were graziers, sh~ep farmers, farmers, settlers m the country, and dairymen, so th1<tone·third of t.he tax is borne by them. Then we come to 3,049 widows, wives, trustees, spinsters, etc. Is it desirable ~o tax the poor widows and. take off from the1r incomes in such a manner as tMs? The next whom it affects are "other trust estates, and estates of deceased persons, etc., 1,429." These are followed by "tradesmen (wholesale aud retail), shopkeepers, storekeepers, carriers, etc. 4,330." Next, "manufacturers, brewers, miliers, founders, saw;nillers, shipbuilders, e~c., 558." Then, "working storemen, rnechanics·, labourers, shepherds, miners, sailors, etc., 2,0S8." Then, "merchants, importers, etc., 1,231." Then, "retired professional men, gen­tlemen, retired merchant;;, others retired from business, capitalists, etc., 865." Now, whom does the tax fall upon, I should like to know? Then there are professional men-"clergymen lawyers, doctors, authoro, editors, scientific men, engineers, surveyors and architectB (not Govern­ment), 1,226." That clearly shows that the tax is not falling upon the shoulders it was intended to when one-third of them are the farmingpopula· ti~n · and there are 3,000 widows, whose incomes will 'be curtailed. I think we should take into our serious consideration what the effect of this will be. The hon. member for Wide Bay has given us the opinions of the Treasurers of the colonies, to show how they speak against the banefnl effect of this tax upon the people. I will n0t repe•t what was said upon that point. In 1887 the Treasurer said :-

"The favourite alteration is that of repealing r1:emptions. It often happens in public affairs that a policy becomes fixed almost by accident."

\Ve have had the same thing here, Mr. Speaker. I remember very well in the early days .when Mr. McLean, who was Treasurer, brought m the Stamp Act. What was said then? We were told that it was a temporary measure for a year or two. That was distinctly understood by all of us; but we have the tax yet, and we are likely tu keep it. On just the same grounds this tax cannot be taken off in New Zealand. The machinery is there and they cannot find another source of revenue. The Postmaster-General has quoted the present Colonial Treasurer of New Zet~land, and that Treasurer is the author of this tax.

The COLONIAL TREASURER: The one you quoted was the opponent of it.

Mr. UNMACK : The gentleman the Post­master-General has quoted is very anxious to get rid of the tax, and the only reason why he does not take it off is that he does not know anv­thing else he could get so much out of. That 'is the reason ; it is not because he approves of the Act; he does not. The people are agitating against it, and have been doing so for the last ten years ; and it is a somewhat comforting assurance that the present leader of the Oppo­sition, the moment he gets into power, will make it his first duty to abolish the property tax.

The COLONIAL TREASURER : Why did he not do it last time?

The PREMIER: He was in for three years and never tried it.

Mr. UKMAUK : I have here a complete set of schedules in connection with this property tax in New Zealand, and in order to let the public know what they are to expect, I must go through it and claim the indulgence of. hon. members for keeping t'i}em so long. I w1ll say what I have to say in the interests of my con· stituents but if the House wishes to adjourn I will stop now and continue to-morrow with pleasure.

The PREMIER : You cannot. Mr. UNMACK: Then I will go on now.

This is the schedule that is required to be filled in:-

" Name in full; postal address; occupation required to be furnished in pursuance of the Property Assess­ment A~t of 1885, for the triennial period commencing the 1st day of April, 1889; and of the full value of such property."

It commences with personal property - live stock horses, cattle, sheep, and other live stock, and the total value of such live stock. The next item is wool. Not only are the sheep to be taxed, but the wool also. The next item is grain and other produce. That affects the farm~rs_ They have to pay a tax on their farms, and then a tax on the result of their labour in addition. Is that fair and reasonable? What are we doing now with the farmers? \Ve have made a special differential rate of railway carriage for the benefit of the farmers, and now we are going to tax them to get it out of them again. Surely that is not fair! The next on the list is mer­chandise ancj. stock-in-trade. · Well, it just comes to this: that everyone will take care to reduce his stock-in-trade to the lowest pos­sible minimum. Where a man holds £10,000 worth of stock now, he will hold much less in the future. But there is another injustice. Before a man can take his merchandise into his store you make him pay Customs dues, and when he has got his goods you tax him again. There is still another injustice. How do you place one man against another in business? One '!'an sells his goods in bond, and another duty pa1d. The man who sells duty paid has to pay a tax on the duty as well, while the man who sells in bond sells so much cheaper. That is an inconsistency and injustice which ought not to exist. There is no doubt that trade will be reduced to a minimum, and instead of importing goods from the best sources people will go to the nearest market in Sydney and get only what they actually require. T"hen the next item is " machinery and plant." I do not know what the Government mean, because the first night the Treasurer told us he was going to exempt agricultural machinery ; the next night he told us he was going to exempt all machinery. Whether h~ has had a .con~u~ta­tion with his Northern fnends, and IS giVmg a sop to the sugar planters, I don't know, but it looks like it. If an exemption ,of machinery is to take place, that means a great deal. The gold-mining machinery is valued at £1,162,591; sawmill machinery, £203,000; and sugar machinery, £1,000,000. Taken altogether it will mean an exemption of about £2,500,.000, which is a very serious item. The next Item on the list is "goods on consignment and pro­ceeds of consignments." If I had a consign­ment I should put them down but rate them at the other end, but I find there is a provision in the New Zealand Act which would prevent that. I may say that I had a .conversati~n recently with a gentleman largely mterested m pastoral pursuits, who told rr:e th~t the t.ax was all right, and that he hked 1t. I said, " Do you; you have a lot of sheep and cattle,"

488 Ways anrl Means. [ASSEMBLY.] A.dJournrnent.

and he said, " Oh, that's all right ; I don't mind that, because they are all mortgaged up to the eyes, and they will have to get at the man who holds the mortgage." I did not enlighten him at the time, but through Hansard I may enlighten him by saying that he will have to pay on that mortgage, and so wili everyone else have to pay who has borrowed the money out of the colony. This man, who has bonowed money down in Victoria, thinks the Government will have to go down there to get the tax, but he is mistaken. Clause 17, subsection 2, says :-

" The liability incurred in respect of the pul'chase of goods which have not arrived in the colony at the date to which the statement relates, and which are exported'' from the colony."

These are not included, and then any mortgage outside is to be paid by those who are here. The next item is "furniture." Here we have two different statements, and I really do not know which to accept. The Treasurer tells the House that he is going to exempt the furniture of the poor man. That is very good. I don't mind that ; but the Colonial Secretary tells us he is going to exempt furniture and household goods, including musical instruments, plate, jewellery, books, and works of art. There may he some house­holds literally full from the ceiling to the floor of furniture, and that is all to be exempted. The next item is "cash in hand," and the next is better still "cash at a bank and deposits at a bank." I would like to see any tax-gatherer ask me to produce my bank-book. Here we are asked not only to state our position to the tax-gatherer, but we are to disclose our misfortunes to the Govern­ment. The experience in New Zealand is that in spite" of the so-called secrecy these things leak out through the office, and they can get at the position of any man. The next item is "deposits in building and other societies." The Colonial Treasurer told the people at W oolloong-abba last night that this would not affect people who had borrowed from building societies, but I know it will, because I know of one society which has a rule that the rate of interest is to vary at the will of the directors, and the moment the directors have to pay extra taxation they will vary the rate of interest, and thus get at the small holcler. That is a very serious matter. The next is a beautiful item, and I am quite sure every merchant will like it very much. You are to put down "other debts owing to me." It 1s all jolly fine to put down cleLts, but a great many merchants would like to get ld. in the £1 for some debts. If a man's ledger shows £20,000 of debts it is possible that £5,000 might be bad, and the man has to rack his brain to go into some sort of misrepresentation. Then you are to deduct the debts owing by you. Well, that is laying open the bank account, and then follows the declaration :-

"I, the abovenamed do hereby solemnly and sincerely declare that the above statement of property and '·the accompanying statements, contain true and accurate particulars of all the real and personal property of every kind belonging to me in New Zealand, as exist­ing- at 12 o'clock noon of the 1st day of October, lb88, excepting shares in public companies, and that the liabilities for which I claim deduction are liabilil ies in respect of which I am legally entitled so to claim."

Now, I would like to ask h~w is a man to declare the value of his stock at 12 o'clock of a particular day and month. Why, it is absolutely im­possible. Imagine for one moment a sqimtter mustering all his cattle and sheep at 12 o'clock on the 1st of October. These things are very nice theoretically, but when you come to carry them out in practice they are impossible. In reference to these returns, and the reiteration

of hon. m em hers on this side that the tax has had a demoralising effect in America, the Colonial Secretary said :-

"The remedy for that would be if the Parliament there or here thought fit to make these assessments public instead of b~~ing kept secret. If they were made public, no man would attempt in the face of his neigh~ bours to make a \vrong assessment. and by that means personal property would be reached within 5 per cent. of the amount of personal property taxable in the whole colony/' If ever there was an attempt made to corrupt the morals of the people this would do it.. It would entirely wipe out confidence between business men. Take this case: Suppose a man is what is called, in commercial circles, "shaky." He is not quite sure of his ground, and knows in his own heart that he cannot pay his creditors. What will he do? He will put down double the amount he is worth and pay the tax with his creditors' money. On the strength of that state­ment he will get double or treble the amount of credit he would otherwise, make a big haul and go insolvent. Then it will be said, "You put down so-and-so in your statement"; and he will then say, "I di::i that because I thought I might redeem mvself."

The PRE:y{IER: You must know a thing or two.

Mr. UNMACK : I do know a thing or two. I have not been thirty-five years in the colonies for nothing. I hope I shall know a great deal more before I am much older; and I shall know more if I am sitting opposite to those hon. gentlemen much longer. They are teaching me very fast. They are teaching me how to trim. I have not quite learned how to trim my sails, and I hope I never shall learn that. I only wish to speak now about the cost of collection. The Colonial Treasurer says it will be 10 per cent., and he anticipates making use of the machinery of the divisional boards for the purpose of collection. But he cannot do that, because the valuatiom are on a different basis. In this colony most of the men who possess pro­perty have it in different places all over the colony. ·what is the use of the machinery of the divisional boards in cases like those? They would have to send all the returns to a common centre, the Treasury, where an army of clerks would have to be employed, and a great number of books used to enter the different properties under their proper headings, and the expense would be enormous. Assessors would also have to be sent all over the colony, and it would cost a great deal more than 10 per cent. In New Zealand the cost for the first year was £30,000, or 30 per cent, and if it cost that in New Zealand it will cost .£50,000 here. This tax would really be a tax on honesty and ignorance. It would be a tax on honesty because only the honest, conscientious men would fill in the forms correctly, and it would be a tax on ignorance, because only the ignorant would be unable to find a way to get out of it. I say it is not right to tax honesty and ignorance, and that it would be much better to try the method I suggested-namely, instead of putting on taxes to increase the revenue, to decrease expendi­ture. I have shown how it can be done, and I hope the Government will accept my suggestion.

Mr. HAMILTON said : Mr. Speaker,-! beg to move the adjournment of the debate.

Question put and passed, and the resumption of the debate made an Order of the Day for to-morrow.

ADJOURNMENT. The PREMIER said: Mr. Speaker,-I move

that this House do now adjourn. Question put and passed. The House adjourned at twenty-five minutes

to 11 o'clock.