A PERTURBED OPPOSITION

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2215, 30 July 1914, Page 6

A PERTURBED OPPOSITION

Sir. Joseph Ward and a number of his followers spent an uncomfortable afternoon yesterday striving to tinker up a case that was past mending. A return presented to the House of Representatives on the motion of Mr. Nosworthy showed that from 1893 to 1912 no less a sum than £1,459,028, derived from sales of Crown lands, was,paid into the public account as revenue. In other, words, the Continuous Ministry, during a long term of years, disposed of a capital - asset valued at nearly a million and a half .sterling, and used the proceeds, year by year, as revenue to swell the inflated surpluses for. which they claimed' so large a share of credit. The read-' ing of the return raised an instant stir on the Opposition side of tho House. Sir Joseph Ward assailed it in impassioned but unconvincing terms as a "one-sided contrast," and. helped by a suggestion from his faithful lieutenant, Mr. WilfOrd, contended that' the position stated in the return was as misleading as if a man were to draw up a statement showing his income, and not showing his expenditure. . This, of coitrse, was a weak attempt to draw a rod herring across the scent. Questions of income and expenditure clo not arise when capital, funds are diverted, as they were by the Continuous Ministry, into the fchannels ■' of ordinary revenue. The debate carried on by the Opposition all through the afternoon was one long-drawn-out confession of the confusion into which they had been thrown, and consisted mostly of very clumsy, attempts to_ explain away the case arrayed against them. Two members, Messrs. Russell and MacDonald, laboured hard to show that since public funds had, been expended in acquiring lands from the Natives, it was justifiable to treat the proceeds from the sale'of these lands as revenue. The' members named were very indiscreet in seeking this line of,argument, for when analysed it served excellently to illustrate tho unsoundness of' the financial methods of their party. The fact is that' money, spent upon this land in the'first instance, was borrowed money. The complete process followed under tho enlightened financial administration of Silt Joseph Ward and other members of his party, therefore, was to borrow itioney, buy land with it, .sell the' land, and treat the proceeds as revenue. As Sir Walter Buchanan remarked yesterday, even a second or third-Class accountant would know better than to pursue such methods. Oppositionists who spoke yesterday made a grtiat deal of the fact that the surpluses of past years were mentioned in the loan-prospectuses issued under the authority of the present Minister of Finance, but this was merely another attempt to divert attention from the main question. Tho surpluses were produced by financial methods which' leaned always to inflation and exaggeration, but they were also, and in a much more important decree, an in-

dication of the standipg of a rich and prosperous country. The Minister of .Finance was just as much entitled to make use of this fact as/ he was to donounce the faulty methods of his predecessors, and institute the better methods under which proceeds from land sales are now retained as capital in the Land Settlement Account. It is significant that the Opposition "talked out" the motion to lay on the table of the Houso and have printed the return exposing their financial methods-. Naturally, they disliked the idea or the facts disclosed receiving any more publicity than, could be ■avoided, but they may be certain, nevertheless, that the truths which they found so unpalatable will be fully placed before the electors of the Dominion at the proper time.