NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 221, 15 June 1931, Page 8

NOTES OF THE DAY

In February last the Prime Minister undertook to instigate an investigation into local body administration. He drew attention chiefly to the large number of local bodies and the cost of their administration and drew the obvious conclusion that by amalgamation a great deal could be achieved by way of economy and increased efficiency. In the interval no one has contested Mr. Forbes’s conclusion and the only obstacle to starting the investigation has been his failure to carry out his undertaking. Admittedly the Prime Minister has had a great deal of urgent business to occupy him but local government costs have assumed such dimensions and rates press so heavily in country and town that there can be few problems that rank higher in importance. Delay has already made it improbable that any legislative action can t be taken by the present Parliament but at least the inquiry should go on so'that recommendations will be ready for its successor.

Endorsement by the Federal Labour caucus of the economy plan adopted by the Premiers’ Conference at Melbourne is wonderfully hopeful news. It was the failure of the same caucus to accept the Niemeyer agreement of August, 1930, that did most to wreck the previous effort at rehabilitation. A two-to-one majority has been secured for the new plan, which would gain because it contemplates a reduction in interest rates about equal to the proposed cut in wages and salaries. Mr. Lang’s Government is the other great obstacle to progress on more prudent lines but it is notable that the New South Wales caucus also appears to have adopted the Melbourne agreement, with the important reservation that the Federal conversion loan should first prove a success. Even so, the reception of the proposals has exceeded expectation and it must be concluded that sheer necessity seems at last to have convinced the Australian Labour demagogues

Citizens will regard with amazement the assurance given by the Minister of Internal Affairs to the Bluff Borough Council that the Bluff-Melbourne passenger steamer service is likely to be resumed early in the spring. Mr. Perrelle admitted that “the Maheno had been taken off the run toward the end of last year as its owners said that even with the Government subsidy the service could not be continued without a loss. Since then the Government had provided the necessary means to ensure a regular service in the spring.” It is hardly believable, if the report were not so definite, that the Government should be ready to bolster up this uneconomical, and unnecessary service with more, of the taxpayers’ money. The same Government has cut all its servants’ salaries, reduced students’ bursaries, told hospitals they must economise, suspended unemployment relief and made many other cuts because it declares it is short of money. Yet it can find more subsidies for the Bluff passenger service (there is a regular cargo service) and more millions to sink in the South Island Main Trunk railway. Actions such as these are so glaringly inconsistent with professions of economy as to make the public despair of the present Administration. * * * *

It is not generally realised that France, although a Republic, rules over a.. great Empire that is second in importance only to that of the British. What this. Empire means is being shown to the world at the. French Colonial Exhibition, opened last month near Paris, to which the British Government has just agreed to send an official representative. Marshal Lyautey, the president of the exhibition, recently wrote informatively of the far-flung dependencies of France oyer the five continents. Thanks to her colonies, he points out, France is a nation of 100,000,000 people spread over an area that makes her the third largest country in the world, the first beiite the British Empire and the second Russia. With regard to population she is fifth, the first four being the British Empire, China, Russia and the United States. France has come to regard Northern Africa as almost part and parcel of. the motherland and Algiers is actually a French Department. In view of this attitude, it is not surprising that Marshal Lyautey writes of France, but for the gap represented by the Mediterranean, as “constituting a continuous block of territory . . .. extending from the English Channel to the Congo.” That is a viewpoint the force of which was not widely appreciated until France brought black troops to fight her battles in the War and afterwards actually used them as part of the Army of Occupation on the Rhina. '