The Hawera Star. THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1930 A TREASURY BUDGET.

Hawera Star, Volume L, 21 August 1930, Page 4

The Hawera Star.

THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1930 A TREASURY BUDGET.

Delivered every evening by 6 o’clock in Hawera, Manaia, Kaupjkonui, Otakeho, Oeo, Pihama, Opunake, Normanby. Okaiawa Eltham, Ngaere, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Te Kiri, Mahoe, Lowgarth, Manutahi Kakaramea, Alton, Hurleyvillo Patea, Whenuakura, Waverley, Mokoia, Whakamara. Ohangai, Meromere, Fraser Road, and Ararata.

The Government’s Budget has been described in various terms, few of them complimentary; it was first dubbed a “black Budget” by Mr Coates, and then other members of the House, with that heavy wit which distinguishes some of them, brightly called it a “blue Budget”; it has also been called a “Treasury Budget.” The last description is certainly the most, apt. Very few people can doubt, in view of the pointed criticisms of various commercial concerns whose business it is to know the rate of consumption of such things as tobacco, beer and petrol, that the Budget was drawn up by State officials “playing for safety” with the Ultra-conservatism shown by State officials everywhere. The country has been assured that the increased duty on beer and tobacco must return sums much larger than those anticipated by the Budget, but Air Forbes has persisted in accepting the word of the Treasury officials and ignoring the advice of the people whose business it is to know these things, not from the detached, aloof and academic viewpoint of Govern mont accountants, but from the close-up knowledge demanded of those engaged in trade. It has been declared by the film interests that the additional duty imposed on films and the new taxes on theatres will return sums far in advance of those anticipated by the Budget—but still the Budget assessment stands and Air Forbes declares that nowhere has he a margin on his estimates —“I have not got a few thousands up my sleeve,” he told the House the other night. If that statement prove correct and the merchants’ estimates wrong, it w r ill mean that merchants and huge commercial concerns have not a very close grip on their own businesses —or, in other words, that Government officials are better judges of the prospects and probable turnover of their businesses than they are themselves. That would provide an unprecedented situation, and the country as a whole does not believe that it will occur. Air Forbes, who is a farmer and a politician, cannot be blamed if he leans somewhat heavily upon the advice of cloistered Government officials in his first attempt to undertake the duties of Minister of Finance, but it is disappointing to find him following that advice to the exclusion of all else—-0,-nn, one suspects, to the exclusion of some hard thinking and independent inquiry on his own part.