PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19733, 30 December 1926, Page 10

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

HOW THE MONEY GOES THE NEED FOE ECONOMY (By Taxpayer.) The Minister of Finance has iterated and reiterated again and again since his assumption of office the need for the utmost economy in public expenditure; his colleagues have lost no opportunity of endorsing and emphasising the words of the custodian of the Treasury; bankers have declared it is only by all classes of tho community exercising the strictest frugality that the financial stability of the Dominion can be maintained, and people at large, professional men, farmers, traders and workers, have been given to understand that their only hope for the future lies in the renunciation of every form of extravagance. A similar warning has been sounded in Australia by responsible authorities who have exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts and no occasion to exaggerate their significance. Speaking at the annual meeting of the shareholders of the Bank of New South Wales, held in Sydney a little while ago, Mr Thomas Buckland, the chairman of the board of directors, declared that so long as the Government and the local bodies of the Commonwealth continued to dissipate the taxpayers’ money upon unproductive works and unnecessary services so long would the credit of the country be in the greatest jeopardy and the country itself on the brink of chaotic trouble. Such a policy might create a fictitious prosperity for the moment, but it could not be continued indefinitely and already there were some very unpleasant indications that the well of borrowing was not bottomless. What'ls Being Done? In view of these statements, which apply as appropriately to the finances of New Zealand as they do to those of Australia, it would be interesting to learn just how far the Ministerial heads of State Departments in this country are practising in their official capacities the precepts they seek to impress upon a listless public. Mr Buckland states with quite brutal candour that much of the excessive expenditure in the Commonwealth is due to the readiness of the State Governments to borrow and spend for the promotion of their own popularity. It may be said quite confidently that in the Dominion no statement of this kind would be justified. New Zealand Ministers, whatever their major and minor shortcomings may be, are honest. It is to be feared, however, that, entrusted with the expenditure of millions, they are apt to become a little careless, or perhaps a little over generous, in the distribution of the hundreds and thousands that make up the larger sum. There always are examples of this kind of thing running through tho public accounts. Some weeks ago tho Minister of Agriculture announced that the Government’s guarantee to the fruitgrowers last year of a certain price for their exported apples would involve the State in an expenditure of about £90,000. Now the Minister has agreed to pay some £3,000 or more to cover tho cost of exploiting one of the provincial markets at Home. The taxpayer will be lucky if he gets ' out of the adventure for £lO,OOO. He is to cover the risk of the exporters

again this season out of his sadly depleted pocket. Some Of The Leakage. < Then the public must have noticed that during the last year or two a practice of sending civil servants abroad to learn their business has become a very considerable tax upon the State. A recent striking instance of this costly method of education is the dispatch of the head of the Treasury Department to London to learn, it seems, how to keep his accounts and how to float loans. This gentleman’s predecessor, a specially capable officer with very wide and varied experience, residing in Wellington and still in the prime of life, surely could have taught his successor all it was necessary for him to know. Failing this, the Prime Minister and the High Commissioner were in London at the time, and it is inconceivable that these two gentlemen between them could not have collected the necessary information and conveyit to the head of the Department here. During the last year or two there has been a constant flow, outwards and homewards, of civil servants of higher or lower degree, in search of information and preferment. The new Railway Board scarcely had begun to function before half its members were abroad inspecting the railways of other countries and, incidentally, drawing substantial travelling allowances. The Government’s Opportunity There are many other channels of wasteful expenditure, perhaps insignificant enough individually, but considerable in the aggregate, which ought to be definitely closed. Railway services are being maintained at a loss far exceeding any claim the communities concerned may have upon the State; subsidies are being paid to locri bodies and even to private institutioTkthat have no right to expect assistance from the national purses; many State Departments and offices are over-staff-ed and over-equipped in other respects; other departments and offices are un-der-staffed and insufficiently equipped to an extent that gravely affects their efficiency; State and departmental trading enterprises are, being run at a loss without tho deficiencies being frankly disclosed, and the State system of book-keeping is inadequate and unilluminative. Tho tendency of all this is to leave the finances of the country in the hands of the heads of departments rather than under the control of Parliament. Probably no other ABnister of Finance since the days of John Ballance has hod so firm a grasp of the intricate details of the Treasury as Mr Downie Stewart has; but the accumulated practices and precedents of three decades present an obstacle to reform which no Minister standing alone can hope to overcome. He requires to have the force of public opinion and the unanimity of Parliament behind him. Given these conditions, frankly and unreservedly, tho Minister in a single year would be able to cut down the annual expenditure by at least, a million without impairing the efficiency of the public service in the slightest degree.