NEW ZEALAND LAWS.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2633, 15 October 1909, Page 7

NEW ZEALAND LAWS.

“NO ROOM FOR RICH MEN.” MR. A. W. RUTHERFORD’S VIEWS. Mr. A. W. Rutherford, the wellknown Canterbury pastoralist, who has sat in two or three Parliaments as a supporter of the Government, is on a six months’ tour of the Commonwealth. In the course of an interview at Adelaide, he said: — “Although my visit to the Australian States was primarily for pleasure, I have kept my eves open with a view to eventualities. In New Zealand our Land Acts penalise a person owning land above a certain value, and our labor laws discourage those inclined to invest in secondary industries, so that practically there is no investment for surplus money. And again, it is pretty certain we shall have a substantial increase in death duties on largo estates. That there is an opening for capital here I am satisfod, and a number ot New Zealanders have already purchased in Queensland and New South Wales. Bv having bald one’s capital in Zealand and liajf in Australia one would largely minimise the graduated tax. Our late Minister for Lands (Mr. M - Nab), when speaking on the second reading of his Land! Bill said: *ho Conservatives speak of driving capital out of the country. Let them telco their capital out of the country. Thank God they cannot take the land; and the sentiment was cheered by the majority of the House. Twelve months afterwards the Dominion was stranded by reason of its want of money, and the vorv members who had cheered Mr. M’Nab clamored' for our Prime Minister to borrow more money to supply what they had a year before declared could be done without. However estimable Socialists may bo, they are not financiers ; that presumably is) the reason they themselves never have any capital, and perform all tlieir generous actions with the money of others. Robin Plood, it the legends he true, must have been a Socialist.”