Progress toward the Single Tax
in Australia

Robert Donald

[A letter from Robert Donald, editor of the Daily Chronicle, to Joseph Fels, following a visit by Fels to Australia. Reprinted from the Single Tax Review, March-April 1909]

As a brother Single Taxer and expatriated Irishman I was much interested in Mr. John J. Murphy's impressions of Ireland as outlined in Land Values. About eighteen months ago I had the pleasure of revisiting my native land and found that Dublin is still the Dublin of our boyhood. The principles of Single Tax seem to have made no headway with our countrymen at home; the true solution of the land question seems for the time being to be lost in the glamour of peasant proprietorship. The failure of the latter system however, is already becoming apparent, as in some of those districts where purchase was effected in the eighties, wealthy capitalists are gradually buying up farm after farm at enhanced prices, thus laying the foundations of future large estates once more.

The same expedient has .been tried in Australia, and I believe also in New Zealand, with similar unsatisfactory results. I think it is a great pity that some able Single Taxer does not endeavor to convert the leaders of the Sinn Fein movement to our philosophy, as during my brief visit the Sinn Feiners impressed me as having all the youth, all the enthusiasm and all the determination which go to make real reformers.

The Irish Parliamentary party seem to have their rapt gaze so fixed on the distant prospect of Home Rule as to be unable to see anything else. Consequently I don't consider we have the slightest grounds to hope from that quarter. Single Taxers cannot be said to be a very numerous body in Western Australia though our principles are beginning to receive rather wide acceptance on those goldfields, thanks to the able and persistent propaganda work of our local Single Tax League. So far, however, we have failed to move our state parliament to give the option of rating on the unimproved values to all local governing bodies.

As you are already aware, this reform has been carried recently in New South Wales and has been in force for many years in Queensland. We feel somewhat confident that before the present parliament expires we shall have the necessary permit on the statute book. The political party which has swept to the front with amazing rapidity in Australia is the labor party, which is. now in charge of our national government. Its policy generally is a kind of mongrel Socialism combined with the most hopeless conservatism. The party, as a party, profess no particular fiscal faith, but at the same time are strongly protectionist. They profess to believe in the nationalization of the land, and at the same time hold to the old lunacy that the nationalization of machinery is equally essential. They believe in arbitration courts for the settlement of industrial disputes, provided the minimum wage fixed by the court is favorable to the workers, otherwise they ignore the arbitration court, and resort to the old method of the strike.

Whilst all our political parties profess to have a wholesome dread of the swarming millions of Asia none of them will make any serious attempt to strengthen Australia's position by destroying the rampant land monopoly that now obtains throughout the commonwealth, and so give the white European a chance to come and fill up our vast unused and vacant places.

The success of the new rating system in our most important mother state of New South Wales has done much to draw the attention of the other state governing bodies to the many advantages of this method of exempting improvements. In addition, the present prosperous condition of the mother state and its large annual surplus compares more than favorably with the annual deficits and general stagnation of most of the other states.

The land tax imposed by the W. A. state government has got so many exemptions because of improvements, and because of deductions from the income tax, that its efficacy in forcing idle lands into use has been almost entirely nullified. We have not got the vast monopolies and vested interests in Australia to fight against that you have in the United States, so I think our progress should be more rapid, but so far I don't think we have been able to give you much of a lead.