FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1904. MORE PERSONAL POWER.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 97, 21 October 1904, Page 4

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 1904. MORE PERSONAL POWER.

The New Zealand Loans Bill was recommended to the House by the Premier last night on the ground, among others, that it would mean the saving of a great am-ount of time, and would dispense with the necessity of loading the Statute Book with loan Bills of a dozeD clauses or more, which this Bill would enact once for all. Undoubtedly it would be a great convenience to have the machinery clauses which are usually provided in every loan Bill definitely stereotyped, in order to a\oid the need for repetition and the chance of error, and the Bill would have been a useful and unobjectionable measure if it had gone no further. But the Bill, unfortunately, goes a good deal further than this, and the Premier's attempt in introducing the measure to minimise its Importance and discount its novelty was entirely disposed of by the pertinent query of Mr. Herries : "Why, if this was merely a machinery Bill, the machinery in the Loan Acts of the past few years had not been enacted." Hie fact is that, in addition to the ordinary machinery clauses, a. number of new and far-reaching provisions are contained in the measure, "and they all tend in a direction very popular with a Government which has' been far more democratic in its talk than many of its predecessors, but in many respects far more undemocratic in its practice. The essence of despotism is the arrogation of power by the Executive without responsibility to Parliament 01 people, and tie whole tendency of Mr. Seddon's administration has been in that direction. Time after time the constitutional powers of the Legislature have been usurped or resigned to the Executive, and the BiH which was accepted by the House of Re* presentatives yesterday is another step in the same direction. The objection to the old-fashioned Parliamentary control which our forefathers did not succeed in establishing till they had cut a King's head off, but which we are weakly surrendering to an uncrow-ned king without a protest, was naively put by the Colonial Secretary when he urged that "it was not desirable that they should draw tho strings too tightly round the Colonial Treasurer and strangle his efforts do the best he could for the colony." To put some wizard of finance in the saddle and let him ride unchecked where he pleases is the true lino of democratic finance according to Sir Joseph Ward, and the House appears to share his opinion. The powers of the Treasurer in regard to loans are increased at the expense of Parliament in more ways than one by this modest machinery Bill. Hitherto when a loan has been authorised the House and the country have been aware of the limit of our liability at the moment of authorisation, but in future the actual indebtedness of the country will be liable to be increased beyond the authorised amount by a sum which will be in the absolute discretion of the Treasurer. This is an entirely novel principle, and it is as false as it is novel. The expenses of the loan, which have hitherto been defrayed out of the loan itself, will for the future be treated as an extra, and the amount of that extra will be xmknown when the loan is authorised, and under the present regime it is quite possible that it may never be disclosed at all. "If the clause passed," said Mr. James Allen, "the colony would be misled, and it would be injurious to our credit ;" and Mr. W. Fraser described it as an "ingenious way of concealing from the House the abtual cost of raising the loan." But the clause has passed nevertheless, and will shortly become law. Further extensive powers with regard to debentures and to the renewal of loans are also conferred by the Bill upon the Colonial Treasurer. Seven years has been the limit hitherto for short-dated debentures, but that limit is abolished in favour of whatever other period- the

Treasurer may prefer. He is also to have power to renew loans without consulting the House as to tbe term, and to raise the whole or any portion of a loan from any Government Department. At present, as Mr. James Allen pointed out, a statutory limit prevents the investment of more than one-fourth of the funds of the Government Life Insurance Department in Government securities; and the manner in which even under the present law these funds and those of the Post Office Savings Bank have been exploited to meet the financial necessities of the Government is well known. Mr. Allen's -contention that clause 4 will remove asy limit imposed by previous Acts was disputed by the Premier and Sir Joseph Ward -on the ground that these Acts were not specifically repealed. It is impossible to speak with certainty on the point, but, unless the effect is as Mr. Allen argues, why should the Government have rejected his amendment, which would have removed any possible anibiguity, and merely have given the clause the meaning they claimed for it in its present form? Mr. Seddon's violent tirade against Mr. Allen's want of patriotism in damaging the credit of the colony by his criticism is of a kind to whicn we are accustomed, and which all reasonable men will treat with contempt. The real defamers of the credit of the colony are those who put through legislation of this kind for removing tho usual checks upon the financial vagaries of Ministers, and the Premier's bitterness is a striking compliment to the effectiveness of the criticism with which his financial misdeeds are ,«xposed by the member for Bruce.