MR PIRANI ON FINANCE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 9834, 6 August 1900, Page 5

MR PIRANI ON FINANCE.

A Mythical Surplus.

(FROM OUR P KtLIAMSNURY REFORTJbIt.)

[by telegbaph.]

Wellington, This day,

The member for Palmerston Noith, speaking on the Ministers , Salaries Bill, as usual had something fr>sh to say on the subject of finance. There had, he asserted, been a lamentable absence of funds iv the colonial exchequer during the last year, ami £300,000 worth of valuable debentures in the hands of the Treasury had disappeared into thin air, and there was no word the Government as to their whereabouts. All sorts of shifts had been resorted to by the Government lo get finances for the contingents. They look money, lor instanc.-, from the Post Office Savings Bank under the Imprest Account, and in many ways there was evidence that the finauees of the colony were not in the prosperous state the Premier would lead them to believe. His estimate of the revenue had been usually £200,000 a year more than the Premier's, but he could assure Mr Seddon that there were signs that the finances of the colony would not -much longer stand the strain put upon them. They knew that the million loan of last year had not been floated. They knew that some dodge had been resorted to to get the mone> to enable them to carry on as far as they had gone, and there was little prospect for the next twelve months of the Lon3on money market being in such a condition that the colony could go upon it for a loan to enable the carrying on of public works and matters of that sort.