PREMIER'S TE AROHA SPEECH.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13391, 12 February 1914, Page 6

PREMIER'S TE AROHA SPEECH.

MINISTER OF FINANCE CORRECTS ERRORS IN TRANSMISSION.

[United Pblss Association.]

Wellington, Feb. 11

As several obvious errors occur in the figures as they appear in the telegraphed report of the Prime Minister's speech at Te Aroha, a "Post" representative to-day asked jthe Minister of Finance if he would verify the amounts quoted by Mr Massey. Referring to tlie paragraph dealing with short-dated debentures, the Hon. Mr Allen- explained first that the special difficulty was that the £8,000,000. was.in the hands of the speculator., and not in the hands of the investor, and tlie speculator would not renew it. "So we have to raise new loans to pay off this^Eß,ooo.,ooo. with-,all the consequent cos^s of underwriting, brokerage charges, stamp duty, etc. ~ Every time a short-dated loan is renewed this process has to he cone over again, and there is where the cost comes in. As to" the: £4,500,000 loan, those figures are right. It costs in the first instance £144,000, but it was a two-year loan, and when it became due after running the course' of two years the cost oc-curred-again, and this is approximately the actual result: ;that it will cqst probably another £230,000 to £24Q,000 to put it in the same position as the loan that I raised in London twelve months ago. Tlie total cost, therefore, of this £4,500,000 loan to put it in the same position as the loan that was floated a year ago would be approximately £380,000, whereas; the total charges and expenses of the' £3,000,000 loan, which runs for thirty or fifty years, were £156,000. If the £4,500,----000 had been £3,000,000, the extra cost of raising it as a short-dated loan would be approximately £100,000. There are some obvious misprints m the paragraph dealing with more liberal advances. The report says that ithe Government proposes to increase advances to workers from £400 to £500. 1 That is clearly a misprint. The maximum is £450 by law, and we propose to go up to the maximum of £450. I nan there is another very obvious misprint in this paragraph —in reference to advances to local authorities. We do not propose to increase the amount from £200 to £500, but from £2000 to £5000."