The Press MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1951. The Budget Date

Press, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 26397, 16 April 1951, Page 6

The Press MONDAY, APRIL 16, 1951. The Budget Date

.This years British and Canadian Budgets were presented to the re- | spective Parliaments at London and Ottawa on April 10—10 days after the financial year of both Governments closed. The New Zealand Government’s financial year also closed on March 31; but if precedent is any guide the Budget will not be presented to the New Zealand Parliament until the second or third week in August—when more than one-third of the new financial year has passed. For many reasons the British and Canadian practice is more desirable. The nation’s finances are set out at once for parliamentary examination and discussion; the Government’s proposals for the new financial year are put up for debate at a time when debate can have fuller meaning and relevance to the proposals than is possible when so much of the Budget programme is already accomplished fact; traders and other taxpayers have early opportunities to accommodate their businesses and arrangements to taxes levied. Standing alone, these reasons make a strong case for an early Budget in New Zealand. But the case is immeasurably strengthened by the fact that an early Budget would 1 necessarily mean revising the par- ' liamentary programme. For several • years complaints have been heard about a programme which crams all the business of Parliament into one long session from June to December. This has invariably resulted in dawdle at first and then a rush of business—too rushed to be satisfactorily dealt with—in the last weeks of the session. It must be said that there was some improvement in the last session of Parliament—the first of the present Government. But the will of any government to improve substantially the-working of Parliament is inhibited by restrictions—-law-drafting and printing, among them—imposed by the one long session. “The Press” has suggested before that a more satisfactory method would be an early session of, say, two months which would carry the .Budget and Budget debate and a convenient instalment of the legislative programme, and after a recess of two months a second session which would carry the main legislative programme. A change of this sort would mean, as an early Budget would mean, breaking up stereotyped patterns and ending some outworn traditions as contributions to necessary reform. But the Cabinet, members of Parliament and Government departments have no good reasons to hesitate on this score. In any event, there can be no arguing that the parliamentary programme in New Zealand is tied to an August Budget when the much bigger budgets of Britain and Canada have been through the departments and Cabinets and are before the Parliaments 10 days after the end of the preceding financial year.