The Dominion. FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1909. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FINANCES

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 507, 14 May 1909, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, MAY 14, 1909. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE FINANCES

: The public will learn to-day for the first time the full details of the financial results of the country's > administration for the year ended March 31 last. The Prime Minister has for some time been busily laying a mass of misleading ugures beforo tho .country, declaiming against the critics of his Government, .and overflowing witn enthusiastic admiration /or. tho wonderful and gratifying position that can be seen if attention iB paid only to one side of the national balance-sheet. He has surfeited the public .with figures relating to. the revenue j but he has been* silent 'respecting the details . of expenditure. In his Invercargill speech he had columns to say about the revenue, but whenever, in his manoeuvring, he approached the doprcssing word expenditure, ho. wheoled about with all possible haste and promptly placed tho greatest possible distance- between'.that .unpleasant subject and' his argument. Like.a modem descendant of the delicate young roan who so annoyed the downright Hotspur he resents the talk of expenditure, and as for tho critics who will,talk of it, Ho rails' them untaught knaves, unman- . ncrly, To bring such slovenly, unhandsomb facts Betwixt tho wiud and his nobility.. Few people, howover, havo been deceived by the Prime Minister's desperate endeavour to divert attention from the debit side of the ledger. Every sensible man must have felt somo contempt for this evident reluctancc to tell the public the full story of the year's working.; Most people are quite woll aware that the state of the expenditure is of far grcator importance than tho ctata of the

revenue. However, we were bound to get the facts sooner or later, in spite of the Peime Minister, and the public may sec them for itself in our news columns to-day. "Our financcß," said Sir Joseph Ward at Invorcargill, 1 "are exceedingly satisfactory." How satisfactory arc they 1 The revenue, which has. for many years regularly increased uy hundreds of thousands every year, showed a decrease of £51,761. The expenditure, on the other hand, leapt up by £571,818. Those figures speak in a different tone from that of the Prime Minister. It may help to a fuller understanding of their significance when we say that one repetition of them would mean a heavy deficit. Yet we, were told in the Invercargill speech that "the utmost economy was exercised, during the year." The utmost economy I When the cost of the Departments,, which had reached the staggering figure of £5,035,343 in 1907-8, rose to. £5,575,483. When almost exactly £100,000 more was absorbed by the Post and Telegraph Department, nearly £160,000 by tae Working Railways Department, nearly £36,000 by the Department of Internal Affairs, £50,000 by the Lands Department, £10,000 by the farcical Tourist Department! When, in fact, money was being poured out like water in every direction I That the Government made desperate efforts at economy in the last quarter, after we had r called attention to the monstrous growth of the Government's extravagance, and after the elections were over, we do not deny. But who can possibly miss the drift of the figures which Sie Joseph has shrunk from announcing to the public? Special attention is due to the figures relating to tho Working Railways Department. In the Invercargill speech we were told that the railways receipts had increased by'£153,112, and that "the railway returns keep up remarkably well." We were not told that the cost of working the railways had increased by £157,080—that it took £157,080 to earn this increase of £153,112. For the year 1907-8, the worst on record, the increase in railways revenue just managed to keep ahead of the increase in expenditure. Tho "net profit on working" was £812,118, as against £812,179 in 1906-7 (we give the revised figures of tho Railways' State-' raent). Owing,to the rise in the capital cost of the system, tho percentage of "net profit" to capital invested sank from 3.45 to 3.33. In the year just ended the "net profit" is actually less than it 'was last year. It amounted to only £798,199. And in the meantime the capital cost has of course risen by the usual million and a quarter or so, apart from the million, spent in acquiring the Manawatu line. The percentage of "net profit" to capital is therefore lower than ever. We shall ■ almost certainly find; when the Railways Statement appears, that tho real result of the railways year has been a ghastly loss of several. hundred thousand pounds. And this loss has been made despite the assistance rendered to revenue by those finie sections the • Main Trunk and the 1 Manaiwatu line.' But we, think we have Baid enough to. show that every word of our criticisms; of the Government has unhappily been more" tha.n justified. . The leeway to be msde| up as a result of.the drift into waste and extravagance is great,'but with sound management of the country's affairs this can be remedied. : What we distrust are . the .intentions of the.Qoyornmopt,in this,r.eispect. Foir' the. moment/' we,';believe, -they are thoroughly alarmed Vm the public will take of their maladministration, and • they are' in consequence, on their: best behaviour. But that is a passing, mood. With a return to better .times they 'may be '' expected, unless checked' by a- strong and .determined party in Parliament, to renew their old extravagances, , and again lull the publio into a false sense of security by.plausible professions and concealment of the real position of affairs.