THE LOAN PROPOSALS AND THE REFERENDUM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5667, 11 September 1896, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE LOAN PROPOSALS AND THE REFERENDUM.

(Oamaru Mail.) It has been urged with some force by the Lyttelton Times that the question of borrowing should be remitted direct to the electors by way of the referendum. It is suggested that this should be done either by embodying in the Loan Bill itself a clause stipulating that the loan shall not be raised unless sanctioned by a direct vote of the people, or that the Keferenduni Bill should be passed this session with a provision that all borrowing proposals shall be submitted to the popular vote. At the first glance the suggestion seems reasonable enough, especially as no delay would necessarily be occasioned in raising the loan. * * * It must not be supposed that we are averse to giving the people the full right of saying whether or not. the colony shall enter the money market as a borrower. On the contrary we hold that the people have a right to claim a potent voice in the determination of such, a vital question, and we should have been glad if the matter of borrowing could have been deferred until after the assembling of the new Parliament, so that members might have sought definite authority upon the subject from their constituents at the forthcoming general election. But we are satisfied that such a course could only have resulted in injury to the colony by giving a serious check to the work of colonisation, and necessitating- driving a large body of men into the ranks of the unemployed. * * * With an ordinary amount of care the million, supplemented by such aid as might be given to the Public Works Fund from revenue from time to time, should be sufficient to meet the requirements during the life of the new Parliament, and to carry on. until after the general election, which in the ordinary course of events will take place in 1899. In authorising the proposed loan Parliament might, therefore, specially stipulate that there shall be no renewal of borrowing for four years, and direct Ministers to so regulate the expenditure as to spread the million over the whole of that period. There would be no real hardship or impropriety about such a course. The House, in sanctioning the proposal of Ministers, has not, we are sure, given countenance to any thought of entering upon a wholesale or lavish expenditure (of borrowed money. It has merely made provision for a steady prosecution of the work of colonisation, and in directing that the expenditure of the loan should be spread over four years it would at once make clear its intention and protect the right of the people to determine the course of procedure to be followed after that time.