DEPARTMENTAL EXPENDITURE

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 June 1940, Page 5

DEPARTMENTAL EXPENDITURE

NEED FOR MORE CONTROL. [per press association.] WELLINGTON, June 28. More effective public economies and modification of expenditure on public works are recommended by the Associated Chambers of Commerce, in a statement on the Budget, issued today. The establishment of a Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives is suggested to control departmental expenditure on ordinary services. “None of those who realise the war situation confronting this Dominion, and there will be few who do not, will cavil at the necessity for people to meet heavier taxation,” says the statement. “These extra taxes are imposed by the Budget on both individuals and industry and commerce, and are to be augmented by proposals so far unrevealed that are to be placed before the House at a later stage in regard to the transference to the State of the whole of any excess profit made during the war period. On the expenditure side of the Budget and quite apart from the war votes it is evident that economies have been made in different directions, but increases in other directions have more than counterbalanced these economies, so that on a comparable basis Government expenditure on non-war services is greater than last year. “Surely more effective economies can be made. It is not a case of employing economies for the purpose of easing taxes. Let the taxes remain, but at the same time let there be economy to ensure that our national resources are devoted to securing the maximum production of goods and services toward our most effective war effort. Every pound saved from peace-time State services is another pound toward the war effort, on which the thoughts of all of us are directed.

“We would suggest the desirability of a Puolic Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives being set up to act in continuous session on the English model to scrutinise and control all departmental expenditure on ordinary services from week to week

in augmentation of economies which departmental heads themselves have no doubt initiated already in their own departments. . “Such a committee as this should be able to do a great deal, but the maintenance of public works expenditure at the level of £15,000,000 as against £19,000,000 last year is a matter of Government policy resting in the hands of the Government itself. It is a policy about which we feel more than a little uneasiness as to its wisdom in these times. We hope it will be found on further scrutiny

that this projected programme can be considerably revised at an early date.”