PUBLIC WORKS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24603, 10 May 1941, Page 8

PUBLIC WORKS

It was asserted by tine Minister of Public Works a few weeks ago that the Government's programme of public works construction for the current year would depend upon the extent of labour and material that would be available. The trifling consideration of finance does not seem at that time to have entered his mind. He has now, however, stated that the expenditure for the year would probably be £ 9,000,000. This sum, it is gratifying to observe, is considerably less than the amount which the Government designed to spend on public works last year. But it is so large that the mere suggestion that it may be expended in the course of a war the prosecution of which must entail unprecedentedly heavy demands upon the economic resources of the Dominion is distinctly startling. The declaration which the Prime Minister made at the Labour Party's conference that, " every human being and every penny of money and ounce of property is the limit of what our effort can and will be" in the prosecution of the war is simply not compatible with a proposal to spend £9,000,000 in the course of a year on public works. It would seem to be perfectly clear that the Govern- 1 ment has not yet been, brought to a realisation of the economic truth that a drastic curtailment of domestic expenditure is necessary in order that, without annihilation of the sources upon which taxation is levied and without recourse to undesirable and dangerous expedients, finance may be provided for war purposes. It has been in violent contrast with the Government's professions that since the .war began its expenditure on local objects has been greatly in excess of that which it has thought fit to apply to war purposes. The British Government is this year appropriating over five-sixths of its expenditure for the conduct of the war, less than one-sixth being applicable to civil needs. The security of New Zealand is as greatly at stake as that of the United Kingdom and at the present time is hanging as much in the balance as that of the. Mother Country is. In such circumstances as these the construction of public works becomes a matter of minor consequence. The Prime Minister has spoken of the war as .an " all-in war." What he means by the use of this expression is explained by another statement of his, which merits all the emphasis that can be given to it, that alongside the need for a successful issue of the war everything else is as. the mere dust in trje balance. An entirely false appreciation of the position is exhibited, therefore, •by a Minister who, in the second yeai of the war. talks glibly about spending £9,000,000 in twelve months on public works in the Dominion.