I consider this grant altogether inadequate. I hold that farmers are more entitled to the complete derating of agricultural land now than in 1932, when the Minister and his colleagues guaranteed them complete derating. The case for derating does not rest on the fact that the farming industry is at present in an impoverished condition. It rests mainly on the fact that the present system of financing local services is fundamentally unjust, because it is based not on the income of the ratepayers or the farmers but upon rateable valuation. Every fair-minded person will agree that the contribution which any citizen should give to the upkeep of the public services should be in proportion to income. Rates on agricultural land, which are the contribution farmers make to the upkeep of local services, bear no relation whatever to farmers' incomes. A farmer with £20 valuation is a poor man. He is a struggling uneconomic holder, a man with an income that is inadequate to support a family, yet he is taxed on that income. We heard a great deal to-day about the high salaries of civil servants. If a civil servant with £1,000 a year lives in a moderate sized house his valuation will not exceed £20. Therefore, he pays the same contribution towards the upkeep of social services as a struggling farmer. It is on that basis the case for derating rests. Christian teaching, and the laws of justice demand that the contribution which each citizen of the State should make towards the upkeep of the State should be in exact proportion to the citizens' means, yet, the civil servant with £1,000 a year pays the same contribution towards local services as farmers who have no income. The farmers are being hunted by rate-collectors, and by the Land Commission when they are unable to pay their way.
A system which allows such injustice and such inequality between one citizen and another, is a system which must be abolished, and the first step in that direction is the introduction of a just system, based upon income, and by derating agricultural land. It will be claimed that the derating of agricultural land will impose unjust burdens on other ratepayers. Everyone must realise that there is only one way to finance derating, and that is by making a grant from the Central Fund to local authorities to carry on local services. Everyone must realise that derating must be accompanied by such legislation as will fix a maximum limit to rates on such property as is not completely derated. Everyone acknowledges that it would be absolutely necessary, with the remission of rates on farmers, who are the largest section of the ratepayers, to introduce legislation to fix a maximum limit for such citizens as would still be liable to rates. That, of course, may be assumed and that disposes of all the arguments that are used against derating. In addition to what I would call the fundamental demand or claim for derating, the claim based on justice, we have the impoverished condition of the farming community at the present time. We have the fact that farmers for the past five or six years have been labouring under a condition of actual depression, have been carrying on their industry under conditions which no other section of the community would tolerate. You have the fact that farmers have been forced to sell their stuff for about one-sixth of what they were really worth. Would any section of the community agree to such a reduction in their income, to such a reduction in their earning power as farmers have been forced to submit to during the past five or six years and, having been forced to submit to such conditions, does not justice demand that they be recompensed immediately and recompensed by having their overhead charges reduced?
Again, you have another argument in support of derating in the fact that the farmers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland are exempt from rates on agricultural land. Those farmers are competing against the farmers of this country in the British market and if we are to compete with them in the British market we must be put on a basis of equality, that is to say, we must get the same rights and privileges which the farmers of Great Britain and Northern Ireland enjoy.
There are other aspects of this question which, I think, call for consideration. During the past few years the system of allocating the agricultural grant has been revised, has been altered, and it has been altered to the detriment to a great extent of the farmer of over £50 valuation. The farmer with £50 valuation or upwards is not in a position to derive much benefit from the agricultural grant at the present time, due to the fact that the grant has been manipulated to give the largest measure of relief to the largest number of electors. It has been used to a great extent for vote catching purposes.
Thus we have the fact that a farmer with a high valuation must employ one man to every £12 10s. of his valuation — that is, approximately, one man to every 12½ acres of his holding, which is, as you must realise, an absolute impossibility. It is absolutely impossible for a farmer to employ one man to every £12 10s. of his valuation, or to every 12½ acres of his holding, and pay that man at the rate of £70 a year. There is absolutely no means by which a farmer can derive such a profit out of 12½ acres of his holding as will enable him to pay the standard rate of wages at the present time to one employee.
Again, there are other aspects of this question of the distribution of the agricultural grant which expose it to the ridicule of all fair-minded people. A farmer who has a grown-up family is granted relief in respect of all the male members of the family. He is not granted any relief in respect of the female members. It is assumed, apparently, that the ladies who work on the farm can live on air. Again, the farmer who employs female labour is allowed no abatement in respect of that employment. Again also, the farmer with a young, helpless family under 17 years of age is allowed no abatement whatever in respect of those dependents. Anyone, I think, who has any knowledge of agricultural conditions must realise that it is the farmer with the young family, the farmer who is trying to keep that family clothed and educated and fed, who is the most entitled to relief — to the maximum relief — under the agricultural grant, and not the farmer who has got grown-up sons who are able to help him on the farm. Yet you find the peculiar system under which the agricultural grant is allocated is designed to inflict the greatest hardship upon the poorest section of the farming community, the farmer with the young, helpless family, with female employees and dependents, and to give the maximum relief to the farmer with a grown-up family. Such a system must be condemned. It could only have originated, I think, in the mind of someone with a bias against women and children. That is apparently the only explanation that can be given in connection with the present allocation of the agricultural grant. Surely, even at this hour, the Government will realise the necessity of coming to the relief of the agricultural industry, and of carrying out the promise which they gave during the years 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1932 — the promise of the complete derating of agricultural land.