Development

Gold Royalty and New Guinea Development

Letter to the Editor.

I THINK that you were in error when you suggested, in your principal article in the June issue, that the New Guinea Administration is not using the gold royalty to help the New Guinea planters.

My observations —and I know the country thoroughly—are that the Admin istration is doing an enormous amount in a wide variety of ways to encourage the extension of the planting industry and to help the men already established. The splendid work that has been done in supervising copra production and estab lishing a profitable grade; in carrying out all sorts of experiments in practical planting; in organising the highly effi cient medical service which has made life in those tropics endurable —all this has been done to directly help the planter.

So far as actual finance is concerned— is it not a fact that, except for a 10 per cent, ad valorem customs duty, N.G. planters are practically tax-free? Would the planters have continued to enjoy that immunity from taxation during the whole period of the depression if the gold royalty had not been used to their advantage? In other words, the gold royalty has been used during the last three or four years to ease the taxation burden of the plan ters.

I am, etc.,

Copra Bug.

Sydney, July 16.