GOOD SERVICE UNINTENDED

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 8748, 2 June 1914, Page 4

GOOD SERVICE UNINTENDED

Wo have dealt with the curious ! political ethics of tho Finance Minister. We have now to consider the effect of his explanation on the whole financial position. If'he is right about the uneoundness of the position, then must the Liberal Administration of two decades be condemned. Is ho right? He has supplied the.answer hy confining himself to two points ol the many he' has so long and so often denounced. This, on an occasion whet, bo felt forced by the taunts of his political opponents to choose between admitting the Liberal claim of souiki finance, or acknowledging his own to liance for cash on a statement which he considered wrong. Preferring the acknowledgment to the admission, ho sought justification in two points, leaving the rest untouched, ilt is a confession unintentional, no doubt, bid complete, that everything, in his own opinion, in the prospectus was sound except the treatment of the cash received from land sales , anti the policy followed with regard to the fire insurance of public buildingrThese are obviously the only poin+s which ho dared to attack. This, then is approval of the whole statement it the prospectus, with a couple of ex ceptions too trifling to make any dif ferenoe of the least importance. Bui even the exceptions cannot be regard ed as sound points of the position.. It is not correct 10 say, as Mr Allen said at Lawrence, that the cash, from land sales was used as ordinary . re 1 venue. It was used as part of the the amounts annually transferred from the surplus 10 the Public Works Fund. The land capital was thus used for capital investment. Mr Allen may prefer to see it, invested in land purchase. But the preference ■ does not make the investment in works unsound, and therefore does not make the surplus of which it was a part nr. sound. The alleged unsoundness on this point, then, is not even a matter of opinion. According to every rule of policy and accounting, tho surplusm then considered were absolutely sound As to the insurance question, that has been a question in dispute for years, and the soundness of the point concerned may, without needing to enter into details, be regarded as a matter of opinion about which experts differ vastly, and may very well do sc with out injury to the public interest, sufficient to justify an attack of unsoundness on the whole financial position. Therefore, being indisputably wrong on one of his exceptional points, and unconvincing on the other, the explanation of Mr Allen turns out to be a strong proof of ihe soundness of the financial position, as disclosed in theprospectus, which he started to explain away. For this excellent service, much thanks I