STRANGE FIGURES.

Evening Star, Issue 25567, 21 August 1945, Page 4

STRANGE FIGURES.

In his Budget, which directly followed the reports of new afflictions for Japan that have" caused her to throw up the sponge, the Hon. Mr Nash stated: “ The cessation of hostilities in Europe has in no way eliminated the complexities of estimating war expenses during the current financial year.” That was understandable, but it would seem that a still more effective means of complicating such estimates, with the result that they can appear wholly unintelligible, is the coming of total peace. The most general comment on Mr Nash’s Budget, expressing at once surprise and disappointment, vfas that, with the early exit of the last enemy from the war almost certain, causing to be taken for granted a substantial reduction of its expenses, the Finance Minister made practically no provision for a lessening of taxation. Mr Nash has now revised his estimates for war expenditure, in view of the war’s conclusion, with astonishing result that they are increased by no less an amount than thirty-four million pounds instead of being decreased. “Do J walke, do I dream? ” the ordinary man will bo likely to remark.

There are two items in the revised estimates by which most of the increase can be explained. The end of the war brings nearer and most naturally into this financial year the payment of war gratuities to those who have served, a sum amounting to no less than eighteen millions, with the allocation of which no one can disagree. It gives concrete actuality, also, to the item “ deferred pay ” —five millions—though it might have been thought that, as pay held hack, or reserved, that obligation would have been already provided! for. No small number of soldiers in New Zealand are to be released without delay, in an order that will follow what is, upon the whole, the right principle, that of their helpfulness to essential occupations. They will be entitled to both amounts, and, though the Minister of Rehabilitation has said—what sounds like, hut probably is not, another paradox—that shipping will he an even greater problem in the immediate future through the sudden collapse of Japan; that obstacle to the return of overseas men should be ended long before next March. To avoid inflation and to ensure best use of them, the gratuities will be spread over a period, except when they are required for some capital purpose, but those cases will not be few, and the payments may even be advanced before the fixed time, it is plain that the end of the war has hastened some expenditure, substantial in volume, but what is to be said of other amounts?

In his revised estimates, although more soldiers are being released, Mr Nash finds .need for an increase, under the heading of. “ pay and allowances,” of no less than £3,700,000. “ Accommodation, food, and clothing ” require more to be spent on them-by nearly half a million. “ War and other stores ” do not refer to new purchases; the enhanced figure for that item, one would think, might have been shown before. Rehabilitation goes up naturally from two to three millions, but too many of the figures are puzzling. Recalling Mr Nash’s statement which went with their pronouncement, “it is clear that there will be no scope for the adjustment of taxation this financial year ; ” one might imagine that his main object had been to make good that case, in defiance of critics, and that he had overdone it. An.increased requirement for war purposes Of thirty-four millions would suggest, before anything else, another loan, unless recourse should be had to the Reserve Bank, a course which the Minister has rightly deprecated. More details are needed to explain these figures. Mr Holland will not lack searching questions to ask, so that light may be thrown upon them, when the Financial Debate is opened to-morrow night. It should be an interesting debate.