BY R. M. JOHNSTON, I.S.O., F.S.S. 



lU 



The burden and effect of such a provision to each State 

 on the basis of population would be somewhat as follows : — 



PROPORTION OF TAX BURDEN FOR EACH STATE 

 ON ACCOUNT OF OLD AGE PENSIONS. 



Only to one of the two States that now make provision for 

 old age pensions for ages 65 and over (N.S. Wales) would 

 the adoption of the New Zealand scheme be of advantage 

 to the local State Treasury or local State. To enable the 

 Commonwealth to bear the burden of old age pensions for 

 Australia as a whole, it would have to raise an additional 

 revenue by taxation of at least £948,177. 



CONCLUSION. 



However fair and desirable it may, therefore, be that the 

 Commonwealth of Australia should adopt the scheme of old 

 age pensions, and notwithstanding that the citizens them- 

 selves as a whole would have their State and direct per- 

 sonal burden lessened in proportion, as to the extra indirect 

 taxation required from them by the Commonwealth, the 

 real practical difficulties which would arise, and would have 

 to be overcome, would be the fiscal one. It would mean a 

 complete revisal of Customs and Excise tariff, and this 

 would involve much personal differences of opinion among 

 our Australian Statesmen. It would be both unjust, as 

 well as impossible, to try to raise, by direct taxation, so 

 large a sum of revenue. The burden should fall broadly 

 and as lightly as possible on all existing persons who may 

 in their own old age have to claim a right to a pen- 

 sion. In no other way could the broad mass of citizen 

 breadwinners contribute to enable them to establish such 



