The Press Monday, July 8, 1929. Public Works Expenditure.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19665, 8 July 1929, Page 8

The Press Monday, July 8, 1929. Public Works Expenditure.

No explanation has yet been given by the Minister for Public Works of the change he has apparently introduced in the system of allocating Public Works expenditure. With all its faults the system in force for the last six or seven years has been such a big improvement on the old policy of " spoils to the victors" that the new position is a little alarming. Everybody knows that the surest way in the old days of securing assistance from the Public Works Fund was to elect a supporter of the Administration in control of the Fund. Districts were of the " right colour" or of the " wrong " colour " —Ministers have even said so publicly—and unless they were " right " they were not very sure of fair treatment. All this was completely, and everybody hoped finally, abolished by the Reform Government, and if there is to be a reversion to the old system, or to anything even remotely resembling it, the position is very disturbing indeed. The change also, if it is contemplated, calls for comment for other reasons, since Sir Joseph Ward himself when Mr Coates had charge of Public Works suggested some kind of " District Councils" as a remedy for the " frightful centralisation" which he said was converting the House into a kind of glorified Road Board. Members, he complained, all came along to Parliament and asked for millions of money " knowing very well that their " claims could not all be met," and he urged, quite wisely and sincerely we thought at the time, that something should be done to check the wire-pull-ing and local agitations to which such a system gave rise. It would be very unpleasant to think that what Sir Joseph said then he said merely for Party ends, and that he is now back to the Road Board frame of mind. It is necessary however to say again *—we have said it so often that to repeat it disturbs us a little —that even what Mr Coates calls "automatic allocations" leave the real problem still unsolved. It is a great advance that the friendliness or unfriendliness of a district should no longer determine the money that will be spent in it, and that the importunity of the private member i is no longer more important than a district's proved needs. But the fact still remains that the Public Works Department should be a Department of engineering and construction and nothing else. It is not fitted, nor should it be its business, to decide questions of development policy, and the House of Representatives is still less fitted to do this. When a Public Works Statement comes down, with its thousands of items of all sorts and kinds, the average member does not even attempt to look at anything that does not affect his own district. So far as the House as a whole is concerned the Estimates are simply passed as they are, without having been understood or even examined, and this is as true of the members of Cabinet as of private members. The Statement has been prepared by the Public Works Department, or in other words by district officials assisted by suggestions and requests of varying degrees of urgency from local bodies. The nearest there has been to a guiding principle in its preparation has been the vague political principle, or political precaution, of giving every district its " fair share "; and of course a fair share of what is available may be a very unfair and very unnecessary amount to spend in that particular district at that particular time. The allocation of the amount to be spent each year should be entrusted to a Board quite independent of the Government, except in the sense that the Government, since it must retain control of the national finances, would have the power to refuse the Board's recommendations. It would not, however, have the power to spend money which the Board had not recommended, and if the Board were properly constituted this would be a very good thing for the country.