WAR COST.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVII, Issue 7, 7 December 1936, Page 11

WAR COST.

AUSTRALIAN FIGURES. £868,545,231 TO JUNE 30. The total special war expenditure of Australia to date on expeditionary and Australian forces is £270.750,650, including the funded indebtedness of £43,398,098 to the United Kingdom. This statement was made by the Minister for Defence (Sir Arehdale Parkliill) in the House of Representatives at Canberra, in reply to Mr A. E. Green (Lab., W.A.). Tlic cost to Australia to June 30 last of the Great War, he said, reached £868,545,231, made up as follows: Interest and sinking fund, £323,697,185. War pensions, £133,184,169. Repatriation of soldiers, £28,342,601. All other war service. £383, 321,276. 260,135 AVAR PENSIONERS. The Minister for Repatriation (Mr Hughes), in a statement tabled in the House of Representatives, disclosed that in the current financial year, as a result of amendemnts to the Repatriation Act, war pensions paid to 260,135 persons would cost £7,520,298. Service pensions, it was stated, would cost £483,300, and educational allowances to 6299 children of ex-soldiers £87,000. The total of 260.135 war pensioners included, said Mr Hughes. 76,337 soldiers, 58.081 wives, 98,602 children, 8987 widows, and 18,128 other dependents.