BUDGET RUMOURS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9066, 29 May 1888, Page 5

BUDGET RUMOURS.

REPORTED CABINET DISSENSIONS.

RETRENCHMENT SAVINGS.

THE DEFICIT.

MORE TAXATION OR REDUCTIONS. [BY TELEGRAPH.— CORRESPONDENT.] Wellington, Monday. Ministers were in Cabinet yesterday till a late hour on the Financial Statement, and a further prolonged meeting took place today. This gave rise to rumours this forenoon that there were dissensions in the Cabinet as to some of the financial proposals. Whether that be so or not is a matter of uncertainty ; but a later rumour in the evening is to the effect that material concessions have been made and that harmony reigns once more. It is at present still a matter of uncertainty whether the Financial Statement will be given to-morrow evening owing to the awkward intervention of the Masonic installation of the Premier as District Grand Master..

To-night nothing has been suffered to leak out in the local Press respecting any of the financial proposals in the Budget. It is again asserted that the departmental retirements effected will tot up to the respectable total of a quarter of a million. There have been rumours of threatened reductions in the wages of railway employes, but after the assurances of the Treasurer to the contrary in the last Budget they. discredited. It is admitted on all hands, and by all parties, that the Treasurer has his work cut out to meet the large deficit in front of him by fresh schemes of taxation, while the colony is in that critical financial position that it cannot adventure on hazardous fiscal experiments. Fully £100,000 has to be found in extra taxation or else further retrenchment. The £20,000 for the Wellington Post Office has got to be borne this year on the consolidated revenuo; also £49,000 for school buildings, as well as the accruing interest for the short-dated debentures, all of such little items being formerly defrayed out of loan.

Some people declare that the House, as at present constituted, will not endure having the truth made known to it honestly and unflinchingly. The Treasurer, as was said by a British Chancellor of tho Exchequer in delivering his budget, has a certain amount of misery to distribute, and his duty is to pass it round equally and impartially.