Mr Scobie Mackenzie at Dunedin.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 119, 18 November 1896, Page 2

Mr Scobie Mackenzie at Dunedin.

o Mr Scobie Mackenzie, a candidate for the Dunedin City, spoke at Danedin on Wednesday night as follows on the increase in public debt : — Just a word about the remarkable growth of the public debt during the last few years. It is now bluntly admitted that we have added five millions to it, while yon are under the comfortable belief that we are not borrowing at all. lam not go* ing to say a word about the morality of all this no-borrowing and self-reliant humbug. The colony does not care for morality now.— (Laughter). We have settled down quietly to a lower standard of public life ; but nobody seems to care (Laughter). The self-reliant, no borrowing business never deceived me. You may remember a speech I deUvered at Mount Ida some years ago on the policy of Imposture." A good many people thought I went too far, but they don't think so now. — (Applause). But what I want to say to you on the subject of the public debt is this : Suppose that fire years ago, instead of all the deceit, you had been teld truthfully that five millions were going to be added to the public debt, what would you expect to be done with the money? Wouldn't you be justified in saying that now we would have the whole of the railway lines of the colony completed, all the main lines at least, including the Otago Central from end to end, the Eketabuna-Woodville, the North Island Trunk, and a lot of branch lines, with roads, bridges, buildings, and other public works as well ? All that should be done on five millions of money, ov deducting the million and a half for advances to settlers, just think what enormous strides in the way of railway and road construction could be taken on three millions and a half! Now we have another million authorised and half spent before it was raised— and there is only too much reason to fear | that electioneering has much to do with the expenditure,- and there are the millions to the Bank of New Zealand for which the colony is responsible. You may take my word for it there is going to be a terrible washing up of the financial affairs of this colony. It may be soon or it may be later, but it has to come, and then we shall pay for the follies we have perpetrated under the name of Liberalism. If it hadn't been for the fall of money in the markets of the world, and the curious flow of it to mines, everywhere, we should have been in a bad enough state now.