FINANCE. A MINISTERIAL STATEMENT.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVI, Issue 76, 26 September 1908, Page 9

FINANCE. A MINISTERIAL STATEMENT.

EFFECTS OF DECRYING THE POSITION. ADVANCES TO SETTLERS AND WORKERS. Much was said in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon about the financial position of the Dominion. The first words came from Mr. Hogg, who took advantage of the presence of an Imprest Supply Bill to inveigh against the operations of moneylenders, and the hardships suffered -by settlers from want of capital. The reason, he said, was that there was too little money in circulation, and he accused the moneylenders of having made "a merciless use of their opportunity," and cornered the wealth- of the country for the purpose of raising the price of money for nefarious purposes. STATEMENTS AND THEORIES. - Later in 'the debate the Prime Minister had something to say in regard to the matter. Members, he said, now saw the verification of what he had said would happen when the Opposition members and papers decried the financial position of the country', and tried to bring about the impression (that a financial crisis was pending. They found the same thing in such statements as had been made about borrowing within, the country. There was no basis for the statements and theories made regarding the Post Office Savings Bank. The only answer was that the Leader of the Opposition seemed to think that people should place their money in the Savings Bank, and that it should simply be allowed to remain there while they drew interest upon it. .. Mr. Hogg : The proposal of a Shylock. SAVINGS BANK DEPOSITS. The Prime Minister said that the Savings Bank was a depository of the Eeople's savings, and they were bound y the, law of the country to .see that *he bulk of the money should be invested in the public securities of this country. And it was a good thing that this was so. Regarding private savings banks, there was only one private bank which lent money to the Government. The only bank Mr. Massey could have referred to was the Auckland Savings Bank, and there had been no transactions with that bank for a very lon^ time. The idea had also been created that the Government was borrowing from life assurance societies. This, like similar statements, was not based upon fact. It had been stated by the Leader of the Opposition that the Government proposed -to spend half a million m Parliamentary buildings^ and thai/ the backblocks were being neglected. They had the answer to that in the Public Works Estimates, which came down two days ago, providing for big expenditure in the Referring to the expenditure of appropriations on the I Estimates, the 'Prime Minister said it [ was an impossibility to always spend the money and effect the works authorised within the financial,, year. The fault lay in the way the year was constituted, and it would, be better to make the. financial year run from December to December. 'advances to settlers. Regarding the advances to workers and settlers, he said that during tho five months of the- financial year already i gone the sum of one million had been paid out to workers and settlers. In i one month alone they had let out I £300,000, and members would understand that they could not meet demands without keeping an order of sequence. At the present moment they were advancing £2,300,000 in "the two departments — Workers and Settlers — and the Government could not be expected to go further than that. He was against the proposal to create paper -money in this respect, and in his opinion they would be bringing about financial disaster by attempting to do it.