THE GOVERNMENT ABOLITION PROPOSALS.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1708, 9 August 1875, Page 2

THE GOVERNMENT ABOLITION PROPOSALS.

TO THE ELECTORS OP PARNELL,

Gentlemen- You are called together on Wednesday to consider the so-called Abolition of the Provinces. Precluded by circumstances from taking part- in the meeting, allow me to draw your attention to a few ot the salient points of the Abolition Scheme as put before the Assembly. In the first place* it is needless to tell you that provincial distinctions are in no way abolished by this scheme. It merely substitutes provincial districts, and plaeesTofficers over each district, tobenominatedlby the General Government instead of those how elected by yourselves. You are to abandon Sir George Grey for example, and to take any member of the Upper or the Lower House or any other " influential" person whom the Government may place over you. So with all the officers necessary to do the work of the provincial district of Auckland, which will still have its separate Treasary, and all its separate interests to be administered. You are to surrender the Provincial Council, and to refer al 1 your legislation in waste lands, in native lands, in goldfields matters, and on everything in Which your welfare is most deeply concerned, directly to the Assembly. You will be told that you have your representatives in the Assembly and cannot complain. I deny this in toto. Your members will, at the best, only be a small minority of the House. They are certain, souse from Honest conviction and some from interested motives, to be divided among themselves. They are elected for five years, and for that time are beyond your control. Your choice must necessarily be limited to men able to [cave their business for Wellington, or who hope to make money by doing so. At the best, when they go to Wellington they will be confronted by representatives who, with not more than a hundred constituents at their back, have equal power, an equal Voice ia the - government of the country and an equal voice in the imposition of the taxes which cannot be much longer delayed. The district of Wallace, with 103 electors, has one member. Your own district with Gl2 has but one, and Newton, with 1,139, has no more. The Upper House is purely nominal. Be wise then, and insist on these vital faults being rectified before you ban! over yourselves entirely to the tender mercies of an Assembly, whose power aud influence you will, at the same time, so largely swell Remember that the Assembly, ouce endowed with these new and great powers, mus' be left to reform itself. No other power can thcD reform it; and remember too that it can deal wiAh the representation as it likes, and has already proposed to take from Auckland city one member and give him to the Waikato. Under the guise of abolishing provinces, you are asked in fact to alter the whale tone and character of your social and political life. You are asked to part with powers of selfgovernment which you now possess. Nothing is given ycu instead, and the whole undivided control of the colony will be at the command of a fow powerful wire-pullers, whom no man dare gainsay. That is the position to which, by your own act, you are asked to reduce yourselves. Bethink you well, for you will not every day have a man like Sir George Grey to fight your battles. Men in his high position with his great ability, great energy, and

large sympathies are rare. It took many such men many long years to reform the Imperial Parliament and to get rid of rotten boroughs. Will it take you fewer weary years and less hard struggling to get rid of them here ? Will you be stronger for the tight by surrendering the free Provincial Governments, whose assiduity "in looking after local interests " the Colonial Treasurer so much deplores ? Again, gentlemen, I ask you to think over the character of the proposals now made to you. Why are they accompanied by bribes —huge, open, and palpable ? It the General Government can do so much for provincial districts, what reason is there that they should not do so much for provinces 1 It is your own money that they bribe you with. Bear that in mini. Take it with a good conscience. They dare not now refuse it, whether you accept their Abolition Bill or no. But while taking it, tell them that finance is one thing. Your constitutional privileges are another, and you will not part with them without due consideration.

A few lines will explain the finance. There was a surplus of £205,000 in hand at the beginning of the year. Instead of dividing it among the provinces, they kept it back to be used as a wretched bribe to you. The share of Auckland—this "public scandal" as the Treasurer calls her—would have been near £50,000. How welcome would this have been last session, when your Council was devising the gum tax in its dire extremity. Ask yourselves what right had they to withold this £50,000 and what was their motive for doing so ?

They witheld also £41,000 from your capitation rate to pay interest on the provincial debt. They propase now to charge this against "the future land revenue of the colony." Why do this for the provincial district when they would not do it for the province ? The grant of pound for pound to Road Board municipalities from the future land revenue is in the same category,

The grant of pound for pound from the consolidated revenue they can well afford to pay when they retain the whole of the surplus and of the capitation allowance for this purpose.

Keeping back £91,000 in these last two sums alone, they canlwell be generous and pay pound for pound to the Koad Boards as well as grant, for the next eight months, the licenses, Ac, to them and to the City Council. The Council Treasurer will clear a good £70,000 by the transaction, putting that sum into the Colonial Treasury, but adding yearly to your provincial debt by borrowing money to pay the interest theron, and to pay half the grant of £2 for your Road Boards and Municipalities.

So much for Auckland—the public scandal. Now turn to Canterbury, the glorious example of successful administration with which Auckland is contrasted by the Treasurer. Canterbury has also paid £41,000 from her capitation allowance as interest on her provincial debt. Within a few hundred pounds it is just the same amount as Auckland. In future this will be deducted from Canterbury's Land Fund. From the same source her road boards will be subsidised. The rest of the lands fund will be voted for works " within the Canterbury provincial district." So will the rest of the Auckland Lands Fund.

Now mark the difference. The Land Fund of Canterbury for 1574-5 was £331,000. That of Auckland wa3 eight hundred and one pound only. We surrender £41,000 in hard cash from capitation allowance, and have it replaced by money to be borrowed at our expense—until the Assembly choose to stop and begin some new system. For local works we have no Land Fund, and therefore no provision at all. Canterbury surrenders £41,000 like ourselves, but she has £290,000 made ab once available— released from all claim for railways or works of any kind paid for out of the great loans of which such an enormous proportion has been allotted to her. The total sum of which the Land Fund is thus released for all the provinces is stated by the treasurer himself at ten and a half millions. Add to this the four millions just borrowed, you have in all fourteen and a-half millions.

The interest on this fourteen and a-half millions, as the Treasurer tellaus himself, is under the law as it now exists chargeable to the Land Fund. It will in future be charged against the Colonial Kevenue. To that revenue Auckland—the public scandal— contributed last year £310,842 14s. Id. Canterbury, the glorious success,

contributed £259,502 2s. sd. And ontiifeP colonial revenue all the irnHraHl charges for railway?, immigration aQ( j* If that has been done since 1870, i e $ If interest and sinking fund on fourteen and W half millions [is to be imposed. I 8 jj. ** pf prising that your Superintendent should T\ H it his duty to oppose to his utmost $£&m I rious -in allocation of the loans, andOaH I" cripple his exertions ? V^'T^* m I say nothing of the £50,000 fL <l » Government save by the stoppage t I their present grant to Road Boina I I have said Enough to show v I that the whole thing is a juggle and a &»s*' I attempt to take you by surprise- aud t! I dazzle your judgment. Think over it I refect not the good things the Treaaui*! I offers to you. The money is your own. *M \ him you rejoice to hear of the financial I prosperity of the colony. Instruct yo^ 1 representative to support the propose I grants. Let the Road Boards and the C^ if porations have the money ; let them hsvi f the license fees too. Let the interest V provincial debts be charged against «..£ I future land revenue of the colony," but A> I not leave the £50,000 capitation allo\y ance I thus released, and the £16,000 still duef^ I last year's special grant at the mercy of tk I Colonial Treasury. Tejl them you p re f M I that this capitation and this balance of I £16,000 should be paid for another year to I the province of Auckland ; that you wfli I take that time to think over the very gt aTe I Constitutional changes now proposed. They I have told you the money is there and they dare not refuse it, for" that would prove too I clearly that it is only a bribe of the basest I kind, designed for some sinister purpose and 1 not for the good of the people. Take % money, it h your own. But at the gams time let them see that you are not deluded, ■ and that you will not be- made a still greater "public scandal" so long as you have brains to see injustice aud strength to resent Inßnlfc and indignity.—l am, &c, An Sector.