THE CONFIDENCE TRICK.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1262, 18 October 1911, Page 6

THE CONFIDENCE TRICK.

The cardinal feature of the Public Works Statement is the magnitude of the sum that the Government professes its intention of spending before March 31 next. This being election year, the expenditure proposed is much in excess of the average expenditure during the past two years; and since the Government's political position i 3 desperately weak, weaker by far than at any time for twenty years, it in natural that the promises of tho Public Works Statement should almost rival in effusiveness and passionate abandon Sir John Findlay's amusing speeches to the electors of Parnell. The people who are most deeply interested in the Public Works programme are tho people out-side tho cities. They know from their own experience how little faith can be placed in the promises in tho Public Works Statement and the figures in the Public Works Estimates. They know that every year the actual performance of the Government in the matter of roads, for example, is, on'thc_ average, only the shadow of the official promise. They have not, perhaps, looked up tho figures; and they will be interested, and the dwellers in the cities will be interested also, in the official statistics that disclose the hollowness of the promises of the Minister for Public Works.

For the vear 1910-11 the amount voted for the Public Works Fund was £2,996,775. The amount actually expended was £1,892,851, or over a million sterling less than was voted. For the current year the amount submitted for authorisation (exclusive of the smaller special accounts) is £2,921,000. Nothing like that sum will be expended. The amount of the authorisation has never been anything, for years past, but a fraud upon the trusting elector. Here, for example, are the sums voted, and the sums actually expended, on ordinary roads: Voted, Expended. <£ *6 190G-7 - '121,007 2G7479 1907-8 423,785 240,722 100S-!) 283,fi0G 100,790 1909-10 21G.3G0 1G7,855 1910-11 312,515 115,079 1911-12 253.5G5 ? The query mark can be approximately filled in by anybody who can see that the actual expenditure is always hugely smaller than the authority asked for and granted by the House. The case of the back-blocks roads is very interesting. Three years ago the Government suddenly professed to have discovered that £1,000,000 should be spent in four years on roading the back-blocks. Here is the cold statistical history of this political trick: Voted. Expended. 1(108-9 2MU)OO 153*,!158 moa-io 210,200 127,977 1910-11 230,720 53..158 1911-13 21)0,135 ? Tho amount appropriated is just about the million in the four years; but the amount spent in the first three years ia over £100,000 less than half '{he promised amount. At the end of tha.

four years the unhappy back-blocks settlers will probably tmd themselves defrauded of nearly £500,000 worth of Ministerial promise. And so it is throughout the whole Public Works programme. Last year the promif.es were ample; the performances meagre in comparison. This year tho promises are again ample, ampler than ever; who doubts that the performance will again fall far short of them'? Hero are some leading figures: 1910-11. lilll-12. Voted. Expended. Voted. Railways 1,372.000 1,101/i7l 1.-W.OOfl Wafer power... 1)0,000 1,020 30.0C0 Irrigation 10,(100 1,562 30,000 Lurhtliou-oiJ, etc. 21,550 8,127 10,00(1 Immigration ... 20,000 9,1-11 20,000 Roads 511G,(>55 251,103 COO.OOfI Geldfiolds 25,000 10,815 25,000 Owninff Crown lands 100,000 45,091 100,000 National Endowment land roads 15,335 5,619 19,350 Totals ... 2,19-1,170 1,440,839 2,233,350 Tho expenditure for 1911-12 is, of course, not yet available, but it can be guessed at. It requires nothing moro than these figures to make it clear that the Public Works Statement is what the Otapn Daily Times baa well termed "a species of confidence trick designed ljy tho Government to deceive what it conceives to be a simple and trusting public. ,1 And this Government asks to be allowed to remain in office so that it can fool the public in the same way for another three years.