The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1919. GREAT BORROWING POLICY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16521, 23 August 1919, Page 2

The Taranaki Herald. DAILY EVENING SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 1919. GREAT BORROWING POLICY.

Not since Hr. Vogel, now nearly half a century ago, launched his great public works policy, has a New Zealand politician dangled before the electors so daring a borrowing programme as that contained in Sir Joseph Ward's manifesto published yesterday. He proposes to borrow and spend within the next four years a total of ,-£25,000,000, made up thus School buildings £0,000,000; civilian laud settle-

ment £4,000,000 (at the rate of one million a year); railways

£4,000,000; roads and bridges £4,000,000; hydro-electric scheme £6,000,000 (two million for Otago and Southland and four lor the rest of the Dominion—a generous allocation for the south); and workers’ homes £4,000,000; total £25,000,000. Nor does the list provide for the purchase of the coal mines and colliers, the ferry service between Lyttelton and Wellington, the establishment of ,a State bank, or the purchase of the shareholders' interest in the Bank of New Zealand, purchase of flour milts, or the proposed great extension of the system of State advances to soldiers, settiers and workers. Nor yet does it include the loan necessary to “wash up” the war expenses, for which £10,001),000 is authorised and about £6,000.000 already received. Now no one can point (n any one of these objects for expenditure and say that it is not required: no one can say that the amounts proposed to be spent are excessive. Kail ways, roads, bridges, school buildings, hydroelectric installations, workers’ homes, and the opening up of lands for settlement are all worthy objects demanding attention and receiving the support of all classes and every shade of political opinion. But the point is that even if the Dominion is able, to afford the outlay and to procure the money there is no possibility of a half of it being spent within the four years set down for the expenditure by Sir .Joseph Ward, unless he is prepared immediately to inaugurate a great scheme of immigration, and of that there is no mention in his manifesto. Sir Julius Yogel (or Mr. Yogcl, as he then was) included an immigration scheme witli his great public works proposals. He planned to bring the people here to help to carry out the railway and road works he was borrowing for. Today the Dominion is deficient in man-power to carry on even its ordinary avocations. The mines are short of miners, railway, road and harbour works are deficient of men, the building trade throughout the Dominion is hampered for want of carpenters, bricklayers, plumbers, painters, and other tradesmen. The primary industries are short-handed. There are a few returned soldiers, it is said, looking for work, but these cases probably require work of a special kind and are not able to take on navvying or carpentering or to fill the vacancies that are crying out everywhere for someone to fill them. Even when all the men are back from active service abroad there will still be a great scarcity of labour. Sir Joseph Ward must know the position. He must know, too, that a large proportion of the money at present awaiting investment in the Dominion will be required for carrying on the activities of local bodies (Taranaki alone will want some hundreds of thousands of pounds in the. near future) and for private, enterprise in developing the land and industries or in building operations. Putting aside, however, this question and dealing only with that of man power, it is clear that the Dominion cannot spend all these millions in the next three or four years. Sir Joseph Ward’s manifesto therefore is, so far as this is concerned, nothing more than window-dressing, and until he can show how he proposes to deliver the goods it can be regarded as nothing else than an appeal for votes.