DEVELOPMENT WORKS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 193, 17 July 1941, Page 6

DEVELOPMENT WORKS.

What have been known in the past as Public Works are now to lie called National Development Works. At this crisis in our history the public will not concern themselves overmuch with the change in name the Minister prefers to bring about. What they are vitally interested in is the programme and what it will cost. The Government has planned to ■*peiul £20,615,000, a colossal sum, of which £12,950,000 will be loan money, and eleven different departments are concerned in its spending. From the loan raised the Public Works Department will spend £5,816,000 and the other ten departments the balance of £7,134,000. In addition £7,665,000 will be available from “revenues of these developmental activities” to bring the programme to the stated total. Last year the figure was £20,589,000 of which borrowed money provided £15,083,000, so that the actual total to be spent is higher. Yet only a short time ago the Minister of Public Works observed that Public Works expenditure in the current year was likely to be reduced to £9,000,000. The country has been spending far too lavishly in this regard during the past six years. In 1935 the expenditure was £5,630,000 and it has risen steadily—at first in sharp stages —to the present huge sums. At the same time loans have swelled from £3,(50,000 in 1935 to £19,000.000 in 1939, £15.000.000 in 1910, and now to nearly £13,000.000. In 1939 more than £2,000,000 was included for defence. Much of the work to be done must be regarded as essential, but much more is mere Government luxury spending and the country must stand dismayed at its reckless disregard of the paramount need for, economy urged by competent people for months past. Moreover, there is the huge sum of £14,673,000 to find for social security, adding to (lie burden carried by a country with a population of a million and a half, a burden which in 1941-42 will amount in total taxation to an estimated sum of £63.683,000 or about £3B 12s per head.