FINANCIAL STATEMENT

Stratford Evening Post, Issue 98, 7 December 1928, Page 4

FINANCIAL STATEMENT

PRODUCED IN HOUSE. SIR JOSEPH WARD’S CRITICISM. WELLINGTON, Last Night. In the Address-iuj-Reply debate, criticising the financial statement laid on the table by the Minister of Finance, Sir Joseph Ward said it showed the expenditure in seven months was £2,000,000 greater than

the revenue, and anyone reading it would at once conclude the country was rapidly going to the bad. This should not have, been allowed to go

out without some explanation, and the document should not have been 'submitted until it had been certified by the Auditor-General. The Prime Minister had criticised his policy as “Borrow, Boom and Burst,” but what had been the his-

. tory of his Gvvu Government? It ,r had borrowed in three years over . £29,000,000, but because it had paid off £6,000,000 of war debt its Finance Minister claimed they had borrowed only £23,000,000. Even if that were so it still left the borrowed money at over £23,000,000, and no one who understood the English language could make anything else out of it. Mr Stewart 1 said Sir Joseph’s stateI ment that the financial return laid lon the table that, day showed expenditure in excess of .revenue was misleading because the return was for only seven months, when the bulk of revenue had not been received. The • return bore a strong resemblance to that laid on the tabl e by Sir Joseph I in 1912, when the Opposition of that ! day was glad to receive it. j The Government had gone through ! a period of great stress, but as a | result of its careful policy signs of i returning prosperity were more evident in the Dominion, where money was easier on every hand. The position wms now in the hands of the House, an>.l -whether the decision might be, Mr Stewart felt 1 the Reform Party had no reason to be ashamed of its long record,