STATE ADVANCES.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19257, 22 August 1924, Page 6

STATE ADVANCES.

At first sight, to say the least, tho statistics which have just been published in relation to the operations of the Advances to Settlers’ Department last year have an arresting quality. We allude particularly to the comparative figures, showing the proportions of distribution of the available funds iri the various provincial districts. During tho last financial year the Department authorised advances to the amount of £4,889,937. Of this sura no- less than £2,413,867 went to the Auckland provincial district. Wo do not wish our reference to the matter to be misunderstood. Wo arc looking for light, , explanatory information, not for opportunities of intorprovincial controversy, which, even in times of provocation, has never been greatly to our taste. We have no thought of endorsing the notion, hinted in some quarters now and then, that the present Government deliberately extends preferential favour to the northern corner of the dominion. Auckland itself, as everyone well knows, would not dream of asking for more than its fair share of public money or any other good thing that chanced to be going. To borrow the felicitous remark of an Aucklander, revisiting last week the scene of his training in Dunedin : “Auckland people are afflicted with a shyness of asserting their own claims.” They are innately reticent and shrinkingly modest. Still, waiving all extravagant and unreasonable ideas, we must recognise that the statistics of the Advances Department stimulate a desire for elucidation. It is the tremendous degree of disproportion that excites interest, not to say amazement. Auckland applicants received advances of close on two millions and a-quarter, or a little more than one-half of the total dominion sum, while applicants from Otago received £166,5701 It is true that the settlers of Southland, which the North habitually brackets with ' Otago, obtained advances amounting to £286,540; but even so—even if we take note of Canterbury’s £436,425, and of some few thousands falling to Marlborough and Nelson and Westland—we find the South Island total amounted to only a little more than a million pounds. ’Wellington, though beaten for first place by many and many a length, was easily second to Auckland with £778,270. it is a case of “Eclipse first and the rest nowhere.” Auckland £2,413,867 —let the figures be repeated, not jealously, but rather with admiring awe—the South Island just over a million out of something under five millions! Tho same disparity which is observable with respect to the amounts that were advanced is to be observed in the numbers of the applicants to whom advances were made. There were 2787 of these applicants in Auckland ; in the whole of the rest of New Zealand there were 2885. The Minister of Finance said as recently as on Wednesday last that the applications for advances were dealt with by the Department in the order of the priority of receipt. In these circumstances, we might be tempted to attribute to the people of Auckland an alertness that is not paralleled anywhere else in New Zealand. But educational authorities have shown conclusions that are entirely at variance with any impression of this'kind that might be founded upon the figures to which we direct attention. Explanations which may or may not be satisfactory will be awaited with open-minded curiosity.