STATE BANKING

Auckland Star, Volume LXXVI, Issue 199, 23 August 1945, Page 7

STATE BANKING

facilities desired

COMPLEX ACTIVITIES

Parliamentary Reporter.

WELLINGTON, this day.

The Bank of New Zealand had not been any State bank. It had been masquerading as a kind of crossbred tiling, said Mr. Langstone (Govt., Walmarino) when in his Budget debate speech in the House of Representatives last evening he dealt with the taking over of the privately owned shares in the Bank of New Zealand.

Mr. Langstone said there had been a lot of talk by anti-socialists and vasted interests about bureacracy, but there was more bureaucracy outside Government circles than in

any department of State. But Avhere the State had bureaucratic control tliere were all sorts of safeguards. There were some departments which were State monopolies, and they provided an object lesson of what could and would be done. He . eferred to the Government Rail-

•avs which, he said, taking into account the configuration of the country and other, factors, was unequalled as a transport organisation. There was hardly a vestige of bureaucratic control in it, because the employees were in continuous contact with the people throughout the Dominion. The Post and Telegraph Department was another wonderful organisation, and it was a State monopoly. If the Stateowned and operated bank was as efficient as those two Government departments, as the Hydro-Electri-city department and countless other services under State control, there was no need to fear. He looked forward with a great deal of pleasure and joy to -seeing the establishment of such a banking organisation. If for no other reason, it was imperative to have a State bank because of the size and complexity of State activities, which themselves required banking facilities. There had not been one occasion on which the Bank of New Zealand had performed one magnanimous act. His view was that if the bank had been made a State bank in 1894 there would have been no internal debt, and he doubted whether New Zealand would have had an external debt. In addition, New Zealand industries and the general economic set-up would have been far superior.