THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1922. MR. WILFORD AS A CRITIC.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18247, 14 November 1922, Page 6

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1922. MR. WILFORD AS A CRITIC.

The Leader of the Opposition treated his audience at the Town Hall last evening to a very vigorous exposition of his views on the Government. He said at the outset that he proposed to hit hard. No fault can be found with the energy he devoted to hia task. The drawback was that most of his blows were ill-aimed. It might naturally be expected that he would put the case for his party, and give an exposition of its claim to Bupplant the present Government. A dispassionate survey of his speech shows that he hardly mentioned hia own party. He devoted much time to attacking the present Government, but constructive elements were conspicuously lacking. Where he did refer to the Liberal Party most was in the passage explaining that there was a conspiracy afoot to sweep it out of existence. A beaten man is often found to ascribe his defeat— after the event —to an unholy alliance against him. Mr. Wilford seems to be taking time by the forelock and preparing his excuse beforehand. Moreover, ho is quite wrong. The gravamen of the charge against the party he leads is not that there is no place in public life for it. It is that, as the party stands to-day, as it is led, it is a singularly ineffective force. Its sojourn in the wilderness is not due to wicked plotting by its enemies, but to its own internal weakness. Reinvigorated, endowed with new life and inspiration, it could play a useful part by doing effectively that work of an Opposition which has been so badly neglected of recent years. Its record in the Parliament just ended hampers it worse than anything else. There is no need to imagine designs against its existence. It has only to prove its right to be taken seriously.

Leaving his own party, the Leader of the Opposition recited a long catalogue of the alleged sins of the Government. The list is too long to detail, but one or two items may serve to indicate the value of the rest. When the National Cabinet dissolved, he said, there were in the Treasury accumulated surpluses amounting to £15,000,000. The money had not all gone, because some of it was invested in land for soldiers. The inference is that the disposal of the surpluses is wrapped in mystery. The point would have been an effective one were it not that the last Budget gave a clear statement of the facts which anyone can understand. The £15,000,000 was in the Treasury when Sir Joseph Ward relinquished his portfolio. At the end of last financial year the total had reached £23,600,000. Of this, £13,500,000 had gone to the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Account; £500,000 to the Public Works Fund; £1,200,000 to the Reserve Fund Securities Account; £100,000 to the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Depreciation Fund; £560,000 had been utilised to redeem War Loan Certificates, and £279,800 to balance revenue and expenditure for the year 1021-22, leaving a balance of £7,531,367, which was brought into the current year's account. Every penny is accounted for ; where the money is not interestearning it is interest-saving. Yet Mr. Wilford (implied that nobody knew where it had gone. Perhaps he did not, but he should have. Again, the Leader of the Opposition made a tremendous allegation against Mr. Massey of having taken £2,139,000 from the Advances Department for temporary investment in Government securities, implying thereby that the amount for State lending was being wantonly curtailed. The history of this sum ie quite interesting. It consists of accumulations, put into reserve by the head of the Department, not the Minister, during the war, when the demand for loans was small and building costs prohibitive. The process began when Sir Joseph Ward was Finance Minister and continued under Sir James Allen. When Mr. Massey assumed charge of the Treasury there was over £2,000,000 bo accumulated and invested in Government securities. When demands for loans increased, Mr. Masßey arranged for the release of tho money, which was utilised at the rate of £70,000 a month until in September last it was practically all absorbed. This was explained clearly in the House. Yet Mr. Wilford accuses the Prime Minister of doing, for some sinister purpose unnamed, something which was effected before he became Minister for Finance. The transaction was not only legitimate, it was necessary in order that tho money should not i lie idle. As utilised by the Leader of tho Opposition it seemed both involved and unwarranted. From

these two examples, selected, at random, it is manifest what a degree of futility the financial understanding of the Opposition has reached. With the Opposition, pronouncements on finance down to such a level, extra piquancy is given to the observations which fell from the lips of Mr. Wilford about the attitude of the party toward Sir Joseph Ward. Here Mr. Wilford appeared to be on delicate ground. He was not as frank as he might have been, and he left the unfortunate impression that he was dealing with a subject he would not have touched buf for public and private promptings from Auckland, from Wellington, and from Dunedin. In all these cities, and elsewhere, it has been noted that Mr. Wilford, in his speeches, brought the history of the Liberal Party down to Seddon and there stopped. Now the omission has been rectified and Sir Joseph Ward has been acknowledged as a great statesman and a great financier. Perhaps it was unintentional that Mr. Wilford stopped short of describing Sir Joseph Ward as a great leader, or perhaps modesty forbade him to say that in his judgment the party is now blessed with a greater. Whatever the cause, the reference did not dispel the impression that the Liberals of Invercargill and of Wellington who strove to bring Sir Joseph Ward into the field received • neither inspiration nor encouragement from the present Leader of the party. In particular Mr. Wilford did not answer the very fair and very pertinent question put to him the other evening at Green Lane: " Why was the Liberal Party silent when there was talk of Sir Joseph Ward contesting a seat?" On the contrary he but increased public curiosity, for it is a curious thing that the party should be silent and apparently unmoved by ' the possibility of its most prominent living figure, " a great statesman and a great financier," coming back to Parliament. In all that Mr. Wilford said on the subject last night there was no hint of the solution of that riddle, unless indeed it lies in the welcome sentence referring to Sir Joseph "Ward—"his health is much improved."