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Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXII, Issue 10482, 20 October 1894, Page 4

Among the measures massacred in Wellington in yesterday’s slaughter of the innocents are several which we do not regret. There is, however, one short Bill which deserved a better fate, though not of the class of measures which are ever very popular. No bills are popular which seek to give the people power to tax themselves to provide what they want. That was the object of the brief Hospital and Charitable Aid Amendment Bill killed yesterday. Its purport was simply to enable Hospital Boards to rate their tributary local bodies for the purpose of raising half the funds that might be required for adding fresh wards or fresh buildings to existing hospitals. It was brought in as the result of an interview between the Premier and a deputation which waited on him for a grant for the Christchurch Hospital. The other half of the requisite money would, of course, be received from the Treasury by way of subsidy. The Bill was dropped, we understand, because several members objected to it on the ground that it would impose fresh burdens on local bodies whose burdens are already heavy enough. But the truth is that the object of the Bill was only to carry out the undoubted intention of the Hospital and Charitable Aid Act passed in 1886. The policy of that measure was to divide the cost of all matters relating to hospitals equally between the Treasury and the local bodies. Unluckily it only gave the local bodies power to levy rates for "maintenance.” Sir Eobert Stout, the framer of the Bill, has explained that the word maintenance was intended to include all reasonable additions and improvements to hospital buildings and premises; but a judge of the Supreme Court has held that the word has a much narrower meaning, and really covers nothing more than repairs to existing buildings. The result has now come to be something like a deadlock. The Hospital Boards cannot rate for additions to buildings, and the Treasury very properly refuses to bear the whole of the expense. Great pressure has, of coarse, beeu brought to bear on the Government from time to time to do this, and in one or two cases this pressure has prevailed. But now the applications have become more numerous aud larger, and are quite beyond the power of the Treasury to meet. Hence the Bill to which we have been referring. It is obvious that, though blocked for the present, it is an absolutely necessary measure, and will have to be passed next year, either by itself or as part of a general measure of hospital reform. In the meantime it io hard to see how certain districts, notably "Wanganui and Invercargill, will manage during the next twelve months. Probably they will pass their time in pressing their claims and trying to extract money from the Treasury. Altogether we do not anticipate that in this respect the Treasury and the Charitable Aid Department will have by any means a calm or undisturbed recess.