Part 8

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ing the money, and thought that the farmers should find it themselves. If we wait until the farmers have saved up a million pounds in order to carry on the business, I think many of us will be in the sere and yellow leaf. Land settlement should be paramount over revenue every time. We should not look in settling our lands to getting revenue out of the people immediately. The revenue we should get should be brought about by production and not by taxation. The idea seems to be to tax our community into wealth instead of allowing it to produce itself into wealth. Instead of taxing the settlers in the South West, for instance, to the extent that we are now doing, I think, with all the difficulties they have to contend with, we should rather give them a V.C. occasionally. There is another thing that I would mention, and it is to bring about increased production by scientific education. We can just leave it at that. We are fully seized with the fact that we are not farming on rights to lines today. The last matter that I would refer to is the question of railway freights. Our highest taxation which we as farmers have to bear, higher even than the tariff, is the railway freights. Our direct taxation in the way of income is 7 per cent.; our railway and public works tax is in the nature of 60 to 67 per cent. If you have not gone into the matter you will find it illuminating and interesting to work out. We look at it this way, and say that the railway system of Western Australia is a national system, and as such, should be paid for by the nation as a whole. We look into the railway question and find that we borrowed money to the extent of about 17¼ million pounds to build our railways and to buy them. We acknowledge that these are national railways, and that amount is a national cost, and that the interest, sinking fund, and maintenance of those railways must be made by the nation. Now we turn round and try to find out who pays. First let us found out what has to be paid. The interest and sinking fund on that large amount comes to £625,250 per annum. The maintenance on that large amount - I do not mean railway trains and trucks, I mean upkeep of permanent way- is £380,000 per annum. If we add those two amounts we get a little over a million pounds. That has to be found by the whole of the people of Western Australia, because it is the interest , sinking fund, and maintenance on their railways. Now let us see who finds the money. The total earnings of the railways in the year before last, which was a good year, was £2,088,000. The working expenses totalled £1,511,665. The whole of the interest, sinking fund, and maintenance was paid out of those earnings. Let us find how that money was earned and see whether the whole of the people of the State are paying their just portion, according to the benefits received by them, or whether only on section is paying. Take everything that leaves Perth. On every article of goods that leaves Perth and goes to the country we know that freight is added. We do not say that is wrong; we say that is right. We know that on every article a farmer sends to Perth freight is deducted when he gets his account; or, looking at it in this way, the farmer pays freight on articles outward from Perth and inward to Perth. Therefore this position logically comes before our minds : that because of that the farmer pays the greatest amount of the earnings of the railway system today. This is the point : It is not the farmer who does not work his land who pays, he pays nothing. It is the users of the land, whether they travel by passenger trains or whether they send their goods. They are the people who pay interest, sinking fund, and maintenance. The railways are a national asset, but those who do not use the land do not pay anything. We can collect that interest, sinking fund and maintenance in another way. If we reduce the railway freights to the country by one-half, we will give the men in the country, who are the users of the land, the benefit of half a million, and we will force the man who had a block of land next to mine, and who is not working it, to use that land. I am paying all the dues and he is not paying anything. We will force him to pay some if we collect the freights in another way. We are the workers. Suppose it cost you £300 last year for freights to Perth. I am taking half a million, which is exactly half the earnings. Therefore I am reducing your freights by £150. The other man has not paid anything. I am going to show you how you can collect that million pounds in another way, namely, on the unimproved value of the land throughout the whole of the State, town and country, city and suburbs, and unused land. A man has 1,000 acres and he has done nothing with it. His unimproved value is £500; the improvements have not been counted. A tax of 4d. in the pound on the unimproved value in the whole of Western Australia will clear it, and without taking in the big leases 12 miles from the railway. A tax of 4d. on a thousand acres would amount to about £8 10s. and I am reducing your freight £150. The metropolitan area is made up of 27,504 acres and the unimproved value of that is eight million pounds. The unimproved value of all the agricultural lands is about the same. The metropolitan area does not pay anything towards railway maintenance, interest, sinking fund; the country people pay the lot. Under my proposal Perth would pay £390,000 so that we could give the farmer relief to the extent of nearly half a million. One of the greatest reform committees the world has ever seen now sitting in England are proposing taxation on a similar basis. If we do not believe in that way of doing things, how are we going to maintain the Trans-Australian Railway? Are we going to charge freights and fares which will pay interest, sinking fund and maintenance? If so, I guarantee you will never travel by that railway ; you will never be able to afford. We have too many railways for the people we have here, and we are asking the primary producers to carry the whole of the debt. Let the metropolitan area pay its share, and no more, and let us pay our share and no more. (The witness retired.) ---/--- THOMAS CHURCH, Inspector of Branches of the National Bank, sworn and examined : 8915. By the CHAIRMAN : What is your opinion of the future of agriculture in this State?- The future is good. There is no doubt about the prospect for farming all round, but I think our main difficulty at present and for a long time to come is territorial. We have an immense territory here with very few people in it, and the difficulties are mainly transport at present and as far as the financial sider is con-