WANTED—RETURNS.

Evening Post, Volume LIII, Issue 4, 6 January 1897, Page 4

WANTED— RETURNS.

We desire to point out once again tha, difference in one important particular between the style of administration that is tolerated in New Zealand, and that which obtains in other colonies. On Monday morning, the 4th instant, the papers of New Zealand were able to furnish their readers with various revenue returns for the quarter ended 31st December. The figures did not include those of New Zealand, but covered returns of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Tasmania, while the gigantic figures of the United Kingdom were also available. The revenue returns of New Zealand will not apparently be given to the people of this colony much before the 21st instant, while next quarter, if the Seddonian system of concealment is to be continued, the returns will not be gazetted, but be held back in violation of the t law until Parliament meets in June. It ii singular that in the other colonies the respective Governments not only do not think it necessary to hold back or conceal the revenue returns, but appear to delight in making the figures public at the earliest possible moment. And how perfect their systems of bookkeeping must be may be judged from the fact that the Departmental figures were practically ready for publication on the secoud day after the close of the quarter. Why cannot the same completeness and perfection _ such affairs be shown in. New Zealand P Are we to assume that our Civil Servants are less competent than their fellows in the other colonies, or are we to assume that the system of bookkeeping in the Government offices of New Zealand is cumbrous and complex ? Of the ability of the Civil Servants we have no doubt — ' they will compare favourably with those of the other colonies— but of the manner of keeping the accounts we begin to think otherwise. Mr. Georga Hutchison, in one of his election speeches, touched on this point, and his remarks are worth quoting. He said he had been trying to count up how many different accounts there were, and he ascertained that there were 63 distinct main accounts, with innumerable subsidiary ones. Altogether there were 93 accounts, without reckoning those of 13 separate Departments and innumerable cross accounts between them. This was a very wilderness of finance, and the evidence one had of the manner in which the Government anticipated their authority, and sometimes exceeded the bounds set by their own acts of Parliament, was such as to indicate that we were in a very unenviable position. To our request for prompt publication of returns we expect to receive the same stale old excuse, that, the Opposition will misuse the figures to discredit the Government and the colony. We are asked to believe that the Opposition Party in the Parliament of New Zealand is very different in mental and moral calibre to similar Parties in the other colonies, which, of course, is utterly absurd. The fact is that if Ministers desired it the revenue returns of the colony could be published as early as they are in the qther colonies. Ministers have no such desire ; they would prefer not to publish them at all, or, at any rate, to have the power to publish such returns only as redounded to the credit of the Government.