RETRENCHMENT

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18468, 1 February 1922, Page 6

RETRENCHMENT

There is urgent need of retrenchment; we must keep money circulating in New Zealand for useful and necessary purposes. Every penny sent abroad on wasteful expenditure is against the dominion’s interests. Take wines and spirits, for example. For the 11 months ended November, 1921, the value of imports was £836,268, and money had to be sent away to pay for that. The total is over three times more than the value of barbed and plain fencing wire imported during that time; it is over three and a-half times more than the value of all the agricultural machinery imported,' and over five times more than the value of all the dairying machinery imported during that time. In paying for wire and machinery we are paying for things needful to aid in dominion development. In paying for intoxicating drink we are paying for something that is not necessary, that does harm, and involves expense to the community.

Compared with useful expenditure at home, the money exported to pay for intoxicants during the above period is over one and a-ha.lf times more than was appropriated for roads and bridges in the financial year 1920-1921. And il is nearly as much as was spent by the Government in eight months on the whole of the following important development works; —Public works, railways, lighthouses and' harbours, roads, bridges, development of mining, telegraph extension, defence, lands improvement and irrigation, and water supply. The-total for eight months, according to official figures, was, for all these, £868,255, and the total sent out of the country for intoxicants for the 11 months, £835,268.

The estimated expenditure on beer was in 1920 over £3,760,000 —the total estimated drink bill for that year _ being over £7,500,000. Is it worth while continuing this traffic that injures thousands of lives and is auoh a financial drain, when we need e!I the money we can find for the development of the dominion and tilings that contribute to .the rational enjoyment of life?— N.Z. Alliance Publicity " (23)