PLEA FOR CIVIL ECONOMY

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23699, 4 July 1940, Page 8

PLEA FOR CIVIL ECONOMY

In opening the debate on the Budget in the House of Representatives last evening, the Leader of the Opposition rounded out many of the points of criticism that had already formed in the minds of most people. As Mr. Hamilton said, everyone realises that there is a war on, imposing responsibilities and abnormal sacrifices that none would wish to shirk. The Budget itself harps on this theme. But while it imposes the severest sacrifices on individuals and families; the Government itself furnishes its own activities on tho most extravagant standards. Thus, Mr. Hamilton justly observed, there was a risk of stunting the war effort by draining off an excessive portion of the country's resources for ordinary civil purposes. There should be no mistake about this point. No complaint is made concerning sacrifices, or high taxation, or virtual expropriation of certain classes of property, so long as these demands are necessary for waging and winning the war. The objection is to the ruinously high cost at which the Government's ordinary peacetime activities are being maintained. The Minister of Finance continues to invoke the magnificent example of the British war effort. Mr. Hamilton showed, however, that while Britain devotes 75 per cent of her expenditure to the war and only 25 per cent to civil purposes, New Zealand spares only 38 per cent for war expenses and lavishes 62 per cent on civil votes. His chief plea will find universal support from a heavily burdened people—the plea that the Government should at once proceed to review and to reduce the civil Budget, particularly the vote of £20,589,000 for public works. Thus the Government would be practising the economy it preaches to and and imposes on others, and would at the same time lift some of the departmental deadweight that threatens to prejudice the war effort itself.