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Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 31, 13 March 1914, Page 6

Mr Holman, the New South .Wales Labour Premier, after much complicated arithmetic, can see ahead of him no more than a surplus of something over £38,000 on the year's transactions. And this despite his own story of commercial expansion. The deposits in the Savings Bank have increased to a marked degree —and Mr Holman is at his wit's end to make out a favourable financial case. A tidy deficit of well over a million sterling is expected' in the middle of this year, and that the Government may show a surplus one of the leader's little tricks will be to suspend the small annual payment to the sinking fund. The Labour Premier is financially bewildered. ' The Mother State, through constant "plunging" on the London money market, is up to its ears in debt. Its remarkable capacity for borrowing is equalled only by the thriftlessness of successive premiers. The Holman Government- is in the particularly (though not peculiarly) sad case of having to pay the piper, now that it,has had the music. It set a merry measure. It launched out, in such an astonishing enterprise 'as Daceyville—which returned a heavy loss last year—while it has inflated the

expenditure on education until it has reached the enormous total of £2,000,000. Mr Holman and his colleagues have been driven to desperate expedient to retain the confidence of the class they represent, and this has resulted in enterprises purely speculative,, and all.pandering to Labour. The Government is only paying now the price of. power and position—the price of the Labour vote. It is placing the taxpayers in embarrassing circumstances, since tsuch experimental legislation as has been indulged in by Mr Holman is a costly business. The Leader_qf .the Opposition talks of '' financial ; debauchery.'' The phrase is harsh, but can be in part justified by figures. . . . .