NOT COLOURLESS!

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 32, 6 August 1930, Page 8

NOT COLOURLESS!

All sorts of titles—complimentary and otherwise—have been, suggested in the course of the Financial Debate for Mr. Forbes's first Budget. "The Black Budget was suggested by the Leader of the Opposition; the Minister of Lands' idea was that it should be dubbed "the Budget of Justice"; Mr. H. G. Dickie (Patea) called it "the Blue Budget"; and still another member applied the term "the Fishermen's Budgtit." Other names were applied when the Debate was resumed yesterday. Most of the colours of the rainbow were used in description of the document.

Mr. J. S. Fletcher (Independent, Grey Lynn) said there was a more expressive Anglo-Saxon word that he would use, and he ventured the suggestion that the Budget would go down in history as "the Bad Budget." "I am afraid it is going to be bad for the United Party," he-added, before going on to criticise many of its proposals.

"After listening to the member for Grey Lynn," said Mr. A. W. Hall (Eeform, Haurakl), "I think it has got to the stage when the Budget can be regarded as 'the Black and Blue Budget,' Possibly historians of the future will speak of it as 'the Bed Budget,' for the reason that it has received the practical, if not the verbal, support of the members of the Labour Party. To carry the colour scheme a little further, I think I can almost hear the members on the Ministerial benches referring to it as 'the White Budget,' white being the emblem of purity. But it seems to me that the colour green describes it best, because it is obviously prepared by an inexperienced Minister of Finance, and the members on the Government benches must be very green if they expect the people to swallow the Budget whole."