Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1930. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume L, Issue 117, 14 April 1930, Page 6

Manawatu Evening Standard. MONDAY, APRIL 14, 1930. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES.

Governments that nowadays practise severe economies .are not much in favour with democratic peoples. The Butler Administration in South Australia has g-one down, not, as Mr Theodore, the Federal Treasurer, has implied, because the people of that State approve of the severe restrictions the Commonwealth Government is imposing l in the interests of protection, but purely on account of its domestic policy. South Australia is not a manufacturturing State, such industries in the shape of manufactures as it possesses being completely overshadowed by the manufacturing industries of Victoria and New South Wales. When the Butler (Liberal) Government took over the control of State affairs it followed a reign of Labour extravagance, which, so far as the Consolidated Fund was concerned, had left the Labour Government “scraping the till” with more than a few debts outstanding, the revenue amounting to £10,474,000 for the year ended June 30, 1926, while the expenditure had totalled £10,461,000. The loan expenditure that year amounted to £5,551,534; but in the following year when they quitted office they had piled up a loan expenditure of £8,942,018, and Mr Butler and his colleagues found, themselves, as the result of the action of their predecessors, faced with a Consolidated Fund deficit of over a million. It became their imperative and unpleasant duty therefore to institute a policy of stern retrenchment, the resources of the State being quite unequal to a State per capita expenditure of £2O 17s lid and loan disbursements approximating £9,000,000 per annum (actually £8,942,018). The railways (State owned) were being run at a loss of £1,747,816, and, to retrieve the .position, as far as possible (the accumulated deficit amounting to £3,080,331), the Government entered upon wholesale dismissals, and practised other economies which were greatly resented by the - wageearning class, the - result being that, during its three years of office, the Butler Government has been far from popular. It may certainly claim to have had a mandate from the people to curtail the national expenditure, and to place its finances on a sound basis, but the steps taken in that direction were unpopular, and the depressed condition of affairs

generally prevented their doing all that might have been done. Democracy has' now revolted against them, yielding once again to the blandishments of Labour, ever ready to offer something for nothing. In much the same way, New Zealand democracy, lured by the £70,000,000 loan policy of the United Party, placed the latter in a position to obtain office in 1928. Mr Coates plainly told the electors that the Reform Government could not offer them something for nothing, whereas the promise of seventy millions for expenditure without cost to the country—the claim was that it would not add one penny to the taxation of the country—captivated the country, despite the protests of the wiser heads against the United Party’s “boom,.borrow and burst” policy.

ECONOMIES UNPOPULAR

The New South Wales Government is now threatened. Mr Bavin and his colleagues inherited a legacy of debt and increased taxation which their predecessors —Mr Lang and his colleagues—passed on to them, resulting from excessive borrowing for expenditures on unremunerative enterprises. To add to the new Government’s difficulties, they were forced to carry on the latter, and to continue with the endowment and other social schemes which the Labour Government had initiated regardless of cost to the community generally. They have also had to contend against strikes and industrial unrest, unprecedented in character and extent, including the Newcastle coal stoppage, all negotiations in connection with which have failed up to the present to achieve a settlement, and which has added enormously to the expenditure of the country. All these things have offset the economies which the Government has effected in other directions. . But the Bavin Government has instituted a scheme of retrenchment which may be described as heroic in character, but the execution of which is bound to increase is unpopularity, although it has begun at home by cutting down Ministerial emoluments and the honoraria paid to members of the Legislature. It is also proposing a cut in the salaries paid to members of the civil service. But > the more crucial of Mr Bavin’s proposals, and those to which objection is most likely to be made;embody a return to the 48-hour week in all industries, and- a tax on all wages to provide a fund for the relief of unemployment. ' It is upon these proposals that Mr Lang, the Labour leader and exPremier, has challenged the Government to go .to the country at once, and it is a moral certainty that, if it did so, it would'face defeat. The heavy railway deficit, coupled with the operation of the Federal award, which increased the railway working expenses by over £600,000 per annum, has necessitated dismissals in the Railway Department and the cutting down of the earnings of the employees by employing them on shorter time so as to keep other men engaged, whose services would otherwise have had to be dispensed with. All this tends to increase the growing feeling against % the Government, although obviously their only hope of financing the country on sound lines is to cut down expenditure which, during the Labour Government’s term of office, rose from £37,251,000, under the Fuller Administration in 1923-24 to £42,691,000, under Mr Lang in 1926-27. The thing that Labour cannot and will not understand, or, understanding - , x'efuses to acknowledge, is that the wholesale expenditure of public moneys, coupled with uneconomic conditions in employment, makes for deficits, which can only be met by a return to those conditions under which waste of time and labour is eliminated, production and labour costs are established on a payable basis, and both national and private expenditures are placed on lines which enable both to meet the obligations .'and liabilities of the nation and the individual. The tendency to ignore such considerations seems inherent in most democracies, and, as a consequence, political parties offering “something for nothing”, are more likely to be preferred by the electors than those who honestly and straightforwardly say they cannot do so. Democracy, in these somewhat degenerate times, prefers to teed upon rather than feed Governments, leaving the latter to levy toll upon trade and. industry to meet its ever increasing demands for pensions, housing, family allowances and assistance ot ail kinds.