Charges of Corruption

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21631, 15 November 1935, Page 12

Charges of Corruption

: The Postmaster-Genernl's temperate and just j i answer to Mr H. T. Armstrong, who in a recent ! i speech charged the Government with rigging i ) or faking the budget, has drawn from Mr | | Armstrong a statement printed in " The Press " ; ' this morning; and its ugliness earns a comment j j of which its substance is not worthy. Mr j | Armstrong said that the Government had a j | " peculiar method of book-keeping,"' and did i ; such things with its accounts as, it' a town clerk I j or company secretary did (hem, would very | : soon land him "in the cooler.' 1 This is. of ! ; course, a charge of dishonesty. Mr Hamilton, j in reply, pointed out that the Government's | i accounts are subject to audit of the strictest . kind and that, if Mr Armstrong had thought he saw some irregularity, it was his duty to draw attention to it in the House. Mr Armstrong's . political measure is accurately disclosed in his ; reply. Pie says, first, that he did draw atteni tion to such irregularities as he spoke of. during the debate on the Financial Statement 1 (Hansard, No. 5, pp. 685-691). The fact is that | in the course of this speech, as reported in • Hansard, there is not a single reference to any ( irregularity in the accounts. There occur, j however, two remarkably stupid references to i the budget; one upon the suspended war debt

payments, one upon the "writing-off" of £7,000,000 of State assets in the process of setting up the Mortgage Corporation. It appears to have been Mr Armstrong's astonishing notion that these debits, real or imaginary, should have been shown in the budget, toppling it into a heavy deficit. A politician who does not know that the budget is an annual statement of income and expenditure, that and nothing more, and that there is no place in it for susJ pended debt or for capital depreciation, is a i somewhat ridiculous figure. Second, Mr Armstrong now repeats the charge of dishonesty and specifies it by reference to the history of the native affairs enquiry and, to the budgetary use of reserve funds and the diversion of £500,000 a year, temporarily, from highway to general revenue. The reference to native affairs is inexcusable, since Mr Armstrong Knows as well as any man that the Government's course throughout was one of complete integrity. As for the use of reserves and the highways transfer, Mr Armstrong asks whether this was " an honest way of balancing a bud- '• get."' Since he has weakened from denouncing to questioning, he may have the very obvious answer. The Government's use of reserves and highways revenue was honest, open, and unavoidable. That, for example, motorists felt themselves to be injured is not to the point; they were called upon to make a sacrifice and disliked it, but were neither defrauded nor deceived. This, then, is the emptiness of Mr Armstrong's charges of account-faking and dishonesty. They adorn his political reputation prettily.