The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1939. PUBLIC WORKS PRODIGALITY

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 262, 3 August 1939, Page 8

The Dominion. THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 1939. PUBLIC WORKS PRODIGALITY

« Since coming into office the present Socialist Government has increased Public Works expenditure at such a rate and to such an extent that this year it is to be more than four times the amount provided in 1935-36. The Budget presented on Tuesday evening sets out a spending programme for the ensuing twelve months which amounts to £23,917,000 —in other words, it debits every man, woman and child in the country- to an average amount of nearly £l5. Of this prodigal total sum, more than £12,000,000 is to be used on highways and roads, and sunk in railway construction and other work —much of it either of problematical economic value, or of an unnecessary, luxury nature. Not a little of it is actuated by the desire to find work for thousands of men whom the Government has been unable to rehabilitate in piivate and productive employment. Another £2,000,000 and more twice the amount, be it noted, that the Government expects to receive from the petrol tax increase—is to be spent in the course of the year on public buildings. Here, again, is an outlay a large portion of which could be postponed, if not dispensed with. But that is far from being all. In embarking upon this recordbreaking programme, the Minister of Public Works is not limiting the cost to a sum just under £24,000,000. In the cases of public buildings and railways in particular, but in those of highways and other items as ■well, he is simply making a down or part-payment, as the case may be, on commitments vastly in excess of the amounts named in theestimates for this year itself. For example, the expenditure in 1939-40 on public buildings, apart from educational buildings, is estimated to be £1 9 50000. This amount, however, is but a part-payment for work which ’will cost over £4,000,000 more before it is completed. The expenditure to which the country has been committed, in the item ot public buildings alone, phis buildings for educational purposes, is. not only the £2,150,000 named in the Budget estimates. Actually it is well in excess of £6,000,000. A similar, disturbing position applies in the case of railway construction and improvements. Here the total expenditure for the year will be £5,230,000. But this represents only part of an accumulating bill which will have exceeded £22,000,000 by the time it is finally paid, and of which more than including this year s allocation, has yet to be paid. Highway construction works also in many cases represent long-term commitments, of which this year s expenditure represents only a part. The progress of Public Works expansion, conceived with a lavishness which is proving to be beyond the Dominion s capacity to afford, except by means of crushing taxation, is a snowball one, tending to increase in bulk of expenditure as it goes. It has risen from six to 10, to 17, to 21, and now to nearly 24 millions of pounds in recent successive years. And there is nothing to show, either in the present programme or in the demeanour of the Government concerning it, that this year’s total will remain a record. Even the adoption of immediate economies will not lighten the load to be shouldered in future years, for the expenditure now being incurred represents in so many instances merely the initial costs of undertakings which will call for still heavier sums to complete.