Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1935. NEW SOUTH WALES BUDGET.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 295, 26 September 1935, Page 6

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 1935. NEW SOUTH WALES BUDGET.

An Australian who recently visited New Zealand, commenting on the Dominion Budget on his return to the Commonwealth, said that the financial position of this country would make the mouths of the State Treasurers water. An indication of the truth underlying that statement is afforded by the Budget just presented to the New South Wales Parliament by the Premier and Treasurer. The past financial year ended with a deficit of £2,298,923, and Mr Stevens estimates that the current period will show a deficit of £1,750,000, after making provision for sinking fund payments amounting to two million sterling. Yet such has been the leeway ever since Labour gained control some years ago that the announcement is seriously described as reflecting continued improvement in the economic condition of the State. Of the expenditure, half is eaten up by interest and exchange payments, sinking fund contributions, and social amelioration expenditure. Salaries and departmental .expenditure account for the other half. Public works are financed out of loans, and every loan means an increase in the interest bill. The difference between the revenue and the expenditure has to be financed by the Commonwealth Bank at the cost of more interest payments. Mr Stevens’s task, therefore, is an interesting one. Itamounts to getting about a pint and a quarter into, a pint pot. Nevertheless he has achieved the seemingly impossible in that in his three years of office he has reduced a record deficit of £14,000,000 to slightly under £2,300,000 at the end of last June, and during the same time has remitted taxes and charges amounting to over £12,000,000. To reduce the deficit to £1,750,000 Mr Stevens has had to disappoint taxpayers, who are tired of the burden of emergency taxation, and has to disappoint also the civil servants, who have been clamouring for restoration of their salaries. The only concession of any consequence, according to the cabled summary, will be a further reduction in the tax on wages of less than five pounds a week, the total amount thus conceded being £500,000. There will also be a reduction of ten per cent, in rail freights on wheat, fruit and dairy produce. As already stated, Mr Stevens is entitled to praise for what he has accomplished during his term of office, for he had to deal with a most formidable legacy of debt and financial chaos from his predecessor, Mr Lang. There is a lesson for New Zealand in the position, that it is folly to be led astray by schemes promising much but based on false conceptions of the requirements of public finance that aims at stability and security.