NEW ZEALAND STOCKS.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXII, Issue 12843, 28 November 1905, Page 3

NEW ZEALAND STOCKS.

In the course of his address at Temitka, Mr Jas. AlUii dev&ted some time to the question of the value of New Zealand stocks in the London iHtHley market, i Mr J. M. Twomey, who sat near tiles stage, "No"* to a number of Mr Allen's statements of fact. The Lyttelton ; Times" had had a good deal to say on ■ t'his supjeet, and his remarks were in the . shape of a reply to the articles in that journal. He was accused of telling the stock story in half a dozen different \cays. Really, it- was tlie " Times" that was. always changing its story. What he had been contending was that New Zealand stocks, which used to be at t'he top. of ■the tree among Australian stocks, had fair, lent to st. lower place, near the bottom, when* they ought to have remained "at the top. The " Lyttelton Times" tried to cloud the issue, by saying that the lower price was- due to the effect of the dates for tl» payment of interst. Bat tlxeafl

dates were fixed, and his comparisons were made for the same dates each year. Then the " Times" found another excuse. It was due to the effect of the different duration of the loans. Here again they -were on. the wrong track, because the New Zealand loans had longer to ran than most of the Australian loans. The reason for the stocks going down was that the Government had been borrowing so heavily. This rear they got authority to borrow four millions. an enormous sum for a population of 800,000 people. Then they had been borrowing on short-dated debentures, and these had to be refloated quite lately. And what did the Government do? They took £50,000 of public works money to buy some of their own stock, because' it was not going off, in order to make the London money lender think it was. The Premier when taxed with the trick rsaid he knew nothing about it, and was not responsible. He must have known and must have authorised it either directly or indirectly. The Public Works wanted cash, not paper and the Department unloaded it on the Post Office Savings Bank at 3 per cent—three and a half millions of it. It was a cruel wrong to the investors to deplete their funds in that way, and a cruel wrong to deceive the people by pretending that they had borrowed the money at Home when they did not. The money lenders also took fright at the way the lands of the colony wsre being sold and the proceeds taken into the ordinary revenue, and they kfcew'how fictitious the alleged "surpluses were. What was the policy of the Opposition in this matter? They said the finance of the colony must be restored till their stocks were at the top of the tree again. They must go back to the system in vogue before Sir Julius Vogel came into pov and establish sinking funds. At present they were handing on all their debts to posterity, making no preparation for the repayment of the loan. The Australian colonies had had to set up sinking funds to restore their credit, and New Zealand must do the,same. Mr Seddon condemned those who talked of these things for "injuring the credit of the colony." rhe injury was done by the practices that needed talking about not by calling attention to them. As a last point he would state that twenty years ago money was borrowed by the colony on better terms than they were now able to get. They then got a premium -of £1 2s 6d on a 4 per cent, loan, while now they had to accept £99.