THE PUBLIC REVENUES ACT.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12190, 10 May 1905, Page 6

THE PUBLIC REVENUES ACT.

Mr Seddon's audacity extorts our reluctant admiration. At the same time, he rather overdoes it, and his latest effort at "bluffing" is easily exposed. It will be remembered thaVAir Massey, in his Chrietehurch speech, showed how the Premier had shuffled over the Public Revenues Act, end especially with regard to the transference of votes. Speaking at Pahiatua, Mr Seddon had asserted that it was false to say that the Government transferred balances from one vote to another, and had declared that it was the Stafford Ministry of more than a generation ago that had taken the power to do so. Mr Massey showed clearly that this Act) only permitted the transfer of the surplus of a vote. That is, that assuming £25,000 had been voted for a certain public work, and it had been completed at less than the anticipated cost—this was before the days of the co-operative labour system—the surplus of the vote, say, £5000, could be transferred to the aid of any other publio work of the same class. This was also the purport of the Public Revenues Act of 1891, section 40 of which ran as follows:— "The Governor in Council may direot that any surplus on any vote on the Estimates may be applied in aid of any otfier vote in the same class." Tho Act of 1900, which was engineered by Mr Seddon, and which pute such unlimited opportunities for dispensing patronage into the bands of the Government, deals, very differently with this matter of transferred votes. The essential part of section 4 is as follows:— , "As and when directed by the Governor, the moneys available in respect of any vote in the Appropriation Act may be transferred in aid of any other vote in the same class." There is nothing in that about transferring only the "surplus" of a vote. Now the Public Revenues Act of 1900 is directed to be read with the Act of 1801, which is the principal Act, and Mr Seddon on Friday told a Wellington interviewer that the olause we have quoted from the later Act supports that of the Act of 1891*. "This," said the Premier, "clearly shows that Mr Mas"sey is unacquainted with the law, "otherwise he would never have fallen "into the error he did." Mr Seddon's statement, we are sorry to say, shows more clearly than ever that he will stop at no degree of misrepresentation in order to retort upon an opponent. Will it be believed that so far from the cjauee in his Act of 1900 supporting tho clause in the Act of 1891, it expressly repeals the latter P These are the exact terms in which this is done:— Sub-section (3). —"The foregoing provisions of this section are in substitution of those contained in section 40 of the principal Act, and that section is accordingly hereby repealed." The reason why Mr Seddon's section was substituted for the section in the Act of 1891, and why the latter was repealed, is perfectly obvioui. It was

tie Bjemier's deliberate intention to take away the last vestige ot Parliamentary control over the expenditare of loan money and place it iflthe hand* of the Ministry of the day. Parliament, as we have before pointed out, goes through the form of voting the money for a particular vote, say tJie Cheviot railway. It rests with the Government to cay whether the money, or any portion of it, shell be expended'at all, and if so whether it shall be expended on the work specified by Parliament, or on some other work in the same class favoured by tie Government of the day. Mr Seddon'e Act of 1900 expressly places this power in the hands of the Ministry; the Act of 1891 did not; neither did the Stafford Act which he has unearthed.