The Press Monday, May 6, 1929. The Prime Minister and National Finance.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19611, 6 May 1929, Page 10

The Press Monday, May 6, 1929. The Prime Minister and National Finance.

At Hawera on Saturday night the Prime Minister made an important statement concerning the Public Accounts. The deficit for the year ended March 31st last was, he said, about £580,000, and he mentioned some facts which explain this shortage. These facts do not help the theory, which many of the Liberal newspapers have been putting forward, that the anticipated deticit was due to the wickedness and incompetence of the Coates Government. Most reasonable people know that the main causes of the Treasury's difficulty were as little within the Government's control as the causes of the recent earthquake, and Sir Joseph Ward's statement makes this clear enough. A failure of between £300,000 and .€400,000 in Customs revenue accounts for most of the deficit; and since the Liberals have been clamouring against the use of imported goods they ought to say, whatever they may think, that this fall in Customs revenue ia as good as a bonus to the Dominion. Sir Joseph also mentioned that the losses on the smaller branch railway lines was £ 770,000 for the year, and he added that this was " largely responsible for the Budget "deficit." Now, the Coates Government cannot be wholly absolved from responsibility for this heavy loss, but its successor and those who support that successor cannot press the responsibility against the Reform Party unless they can effect a cure. And it is quite certain that the Ward Government will not do any better than its predecessors. Sir Joseph did, it is true, say that next session he will " ask Parliament to " adjust the system of railway accounts " so as to do away with that system " the system, he seems to mean, of charging the Revenue Account of the Consolidated Fund with railway losses. But this will not affect in any way the lossm actually made by the railways. The Prime Minister will no doubt tell us later what he means. And no doubt he will realise that he must also explain another and more important point which he left equally vague. " There would have to be an " adjustment of taxation," he said, " it " being essential to secure more revenue " than had formerly accrued from "certain quarters." "Adjustment" is a word which can mean anything; what it means in this context nobody can say, except that it means that the Government proposes to take more from the taxpayers in general than they are obliged to pay now. Few people who know the Liberal Party will be surprised that the Prime Minister is finding the financing of the nation's affairs rather difficult, but there will be many scores of thousands of people who will wonder why increased taxation should so soon be threatened by a Government which was going to make everybody comfortable without adding a penny to the taxpayer's burden. Sir Joseph is evidently out of his depth. Yet he volunteered to swim the Atlantic, as it were, without wetting his feet.