THE SINKING FUNDS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXIX, Issue 110, 11 May 1910, Page 6

THE SINKING FUNDS.

TO THE EDMofi. ' Sir, — I read with interest your leader on Sinking Funds and Loans. Your lucid criticism of the proposal put forward at Winton by the Premier, estop* any criticism from me, for it would bs presumptuous on my part to traverse the ground that you have so thoroughly explored. You have laid bare the fatal weakness in the scheme, the sheer impossibility of protecting these funds from the raids of necessitous Governments. It is a remarkable fa-ct that th« idea originated with the Conservatives, and was appropriated bodily by the Liberals as their very own. In the eighties Sir Harry Atkinson passed legislation establishing a sinking fund to provide for the redemption of the loanc made to local bodies at the end of th© term for which the advances were made. The Act remained a dead letter until the advent of the Ballance Government. Mr. Ballance set aside 2 per cent, per annum to provide the sinking fund designed by Sir Harry Atkinson, 1£ per cent, from the Consolidated Revenues, and £ per cent, from the Land Assurance, the revenues derived under the Land Transfer Act. As a result of the far-seeing statesmanship of John Ballance, a sum of £85,259 of a Loans to Local Bodies sinking fund accumulated as on 31st March, 1895. And now for the history of a "raid," in which our optimistic Premier, who sneers at every criticism of his unsound financial policies as "pessimistic croaking," was concerned. Almost immediately after th« death of Mr. Ballance, the Seddon Government, of which Sir Joseph Ward was a member, diverted these funds into the Consolidated Revenues by means of a debenture issue against the accretion, and yet Sir Joseph Ward had t4ie cool assurance to bring forward as an original scheme of his own an idea conceived by Sir Harry Atkinson, applied by Mr. Ballance, and destroyed by Sir Joseph Ward, and his late chief, R. ,J. Seddon, and the rest of the bogus Liberal politicians, and he tells the waybacks at Winton that he will "earmark the funds so that no necessitous Government may perform in the same manner that which his own party did when they seized the sinking funds created by the Ballance Government. Very clever, indeed. The people of Winton may bolt such yarns as this, but it is to be hoped that the rest of the population is not so soft as to cherish the belief that sinking funds would be protected by the very party that destroyed them.— l am, etc., F. W. BURKE. Wellington, 11th May, 1910.