BORROWING IN WAR TIME.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVIII, Issue 38, 13 February 1917, Page 4

BORROWING IN WAR TIME.

Reduction, in expenditure on public ' works in Australia, and consequent unemployment, have been mentioned from time to time lately in our cable messages. The subject is interesting, and not without leaeons to this Dominion. It ii in New South Wales that reduction icemi to be causing most dissatisfaction. The State has been a prodigal borrower for many years. The State debt roue from £67,000,000 in 1901 to £130,000,000 in 1910. We in New Zea- i land have also borrowed heavily, for our debt rose from £50,000,000 in 1901 to over £95,000,000 in 1914, the last year of peace. In the same year tha Sew South Walea debt was £116,000,----000. But the point to be emphasised here ie the huge increase in the New South Wales borrowing in war time. Althoughi, unlike Xew Zealand, Sew South Wales has not to finance war expenditure, its debt increased by fourteen millions in the first two years of war. According to the " Australasian Banking Record," the State's loan expenditure has 6o far been maintained at the rate of upwards of eight millions a year. These are astonishing war-time figures for a State that does not pay for defence. New South Wales has adopted a selfish policy in the matter of loans. It has refueed to co-operate with the Federal Government and the other States in the arrangemente for joint 'borrowing, and has actually competed against them in the markets. Although there has been a general curtailment of public works in the various States, the recent conference between five States and the Commonwealth decided that £9/732,000 should be raised for these States this year. But the New South Wales Government is finding that it cannot keep up its heavy rate of borrowing, and it has had to cut down its public works expenditure substantially. It recently announced that the contractors for the new system of handling wheat in bulk would be paid in Treasury bills. The cutting down of public works expenditure has thrown'a-large number of men out of work, and there is much murmuring in Labour circles. One Labour estimate puts the number of unemployed in the State at seven thousand. In Victoria the other day the Car-penters' Union asked the Government to grant unemployed carpenters free passages to England, so that they could help in the building of munition factories. It was stated that there were about 800 carpenters unemployed in the metropolitan area. The Minister thought elm proposal rather extraordinary, but it seems to us that it might be better to send men to England, where there is an acute shortage of labour, than to keep them idle in Australia. The fact that there should be euch a shortage at Home and several thousand men unemployed in Australia is one of the things that show that this scattered Empire of ours is not nearly so well organised for war as it would be if it were one country or a compact set of States. Aβ for the man thrown out of work by reduction in public works expenditure, several remedies for their grievance are proposed by indignant Labourites, from a general strike to a local loan. The men are really the victims of a policy -which must break down sooner or later in such a war as this, and perhaps leave a long trail of discontent and suffering.