PUBLIC WORKS EXPENDITURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23364, 2 December 1937, Page 10

PUBLIC WORKS EXPENDITURE

The Minister of Public Works has some reason to congratulate himself on the fact that the estimates of expenditure of his department for the current year, involving a total of over £13,000,000, were passed at one sitting of the House of Representatives. It is possible that an air of unreality pervaded the whole proceeding. Eight months of the financial year have slipped away, and of the next few weeks a not inconsiderable proportion will be devoted to holiday-making on the part of the men who are engaged on construction works undertaken by the department. It is, moreover, to be real holiday-making, for the men have been solemnly warned by the departmental authorities that dismissal awaits them if they accept work, even for a day or two, from another employer during the time for which they are on leave. In all the circumstances, therefore, there is a considerable amount of pure window-dressing in the schedule of works upon which the House was invited to authorise expenditure. Actually, the amount spent by the department in the first half of the financial year, distributed over the general purposes, electric supply and highways branches of its activities, did not amount to £4,500,000. There is no prospect of the Minister being able to expend in the twelve months an amount that will in any way approach the total which he has received authority to spend. That is a consideration which must afford some comfort to the people in the community who are justly apprehensive of the effect upon the national economy of the fulfilment of the grandiose schemes that appeal so strongly to the imagination of the Minister. The fact that money is being squandered in huge sums upon undertakings, from which the country can never expect to receive an adequate return, is one which naturally causes deep concern to people who realise, as all intelligent people should realise, the folly of supposing that there is any necessary permanence about the present condition of comparative prosperity in the country. Unfortunately the impression seems to have been formed in the minds of a section of the community that, by some mysterious process, the Dominion is immune from the risk of a possible set-back. And this impression is encouraged by a Government that is taxing the public to an unprecedented degree and is committing itself to expenditures that afford little ground for the hope that, so long as it remains in power, there will be any room for a remission of taxation. No thought whatever seems to be taken for the morrow. The estimates of expenditure of the Public Works Department afford a simple illustration of the fact that the Government is supremely indifferent to the need for the maintenance of some measure of caution in its financial transactions.