ALLEGATIONS OF WASTE

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22506, 14 September 1938, Page 8

ALLEGATIONS OF WASTE

EXPENDITURE CRITICISED BY MR SEMPLE

MINISTER’S ADDRESS AT OAMARU

[From Our Own Reporter.]

OAMARU, September 13

Details of what he described as “wasteful expenditure,” were given by the Minister for Public Works (the Hon. R. Semple), at Oamaru this evening, The value of the work instanced by the Minister as wasteful was £20,487,000. This did not represent the full bill, he claimed, but were only jobs taken at random. Under the . heading of wasteful railways expenditure, he said, was the total of £11,000,000, the majority of which was taken up by the amount spent on light railway lines started and stopped, and the interest charges on the amount expended, “It was a wasteful policy to stop these lines after so much money was spent on them,” Mr Semple said. Exhibiting a diagram of a balloon loop at - Kirokopuni, in the Rt. Hon. J. G. Coates’s electorate, the Minister illustrated where he claimed £150,000 had been wasted. The Minister also mentioned the amount of £8,379,000 written off following revaluations’ under the Discharged Soldiers Settlement Amendment Acts,

On aerodromes, the Minister said that £400,000 had been wasted in the use of obsolete hand methods. Work which had cost £600,000 could have been done by machines for £200,000. The Minister also quoted the Summit road job at Christchurch. This, he said, cost £170,000. Had it been tackled by the present uo-to-date methods it could have been done for £70,000, saving the taxpayers of the country £ 100,000. Subsidies to wealthy farmers and insurance companies approximated £50,000, Mr Semple said, and represented wasteful expenditure. Contrasting this allegedly wasteful spending' with the efforts of the present administration, Mr Semple referred to his plan to have adequate equipment provided for all jobs undertaken by his department. He said that a total of £1,400,000 had been spent on the purchase of plant and machinery from January, 1936,. up to the present time. Of this total, 54 per cent, had been purchased in the British Empire. Mr Semple had an audience of 1400, which filled the hall and overflowed. He was given an enthusiastic reception and was paid a warm tribute by the Mayor (Mr L. J. K. Familton), who presided, and the member for the district. the Rev. A. H. Nordmeyer, for his work, particularly in the interests of greater safety on the roads.