AN INTERESTING EXPOSURE

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2292, 28 October 1914, Page 4

AN INTERESTING EXPOSURE

It will be recalled that when -the Ward Government went out of office the finances of the country were in a far .from satisfactory position. Sir Joseph Ward as Minister of Finance had succeeded in wellnigh exhausting the funds in hand, and in the last months of his tenure of office neglected to raise a loan which he had been authorised to raise, and in consequence the money available for his successors in office to oarry on certain of the State Departments was at a very low ebb. It so happened that it was not the Eeforni Party but the Mackenzie Government that succeeded the Ward Administration, and iiR. Myers, who became Minister of Finance, had to repair Sir Joseph Ward's omission to raise the loan, under • very disadvantageous circumstances, and the country had to pay the pipor. The matter propped up in the course of a debate in the House of Representatives yesterday, • when tho Hon. . James Allen" threw further light on the. situation. It seems that Sir Joseph Ward, not only failed to raise the loan which ho was authorised to raise, and tho proceeds of which were .urgently needed, but he acted in defiance of the advice of the High Commissioner in London, who was in an exceptional position to offer sound guidance. Mr. Allen quoted a communication from London, dated January, 1912, in which the then High Commissioner urged Sir Joseph Ward ae Minister of Finance to raise a loan at the first favourable opportunity, the - reason advanced in support of this' recommendation being that New Zealand had obtained temporary financial accommodation from the Bank of England and another lender to the amount of £2,285,000. _ In the circumstances the "revelation made yesterday constituted an impeachment' of Sir Joseph Ward's financial administration in the- days immediately p'receding his departure from office. The defence which he attempted was weak and unsatisfactory. In the first instance > he contended that the Finance Minister had acted unfairly in producing the High Commissioner's communication from the official records. Apparently he holds that the-public records are not intended for the protection of' the public and the safeguarding of its interests, but shouM be manipulated to suit the convenience of public men whose past administrative acts are open to criticism. He next .embarked upon a laborious defence of the policy of; obtaining temporary advances, which had nothing to do with the real point at issue at all, and laid great stress upon the fact that unexhausted loan authorities to the amount of five millions were current at the time when he did not raise the loan. This, surely, should have been an additional reason for raising it. It is difficult to find satisfaction in Sir Joseph Ward's assurance that, had ho so wished, he could at this period have raised a ten-year loan of-fou/millions, and his survey of his dealings with the High Commissioner in the affair was a, masterpiece of inept and unconvincing argument. Tho responsibility, he said, was his and not the High Commissioner's. It was the responsibility of the High Commissioner to recommend, but the responsibility of accepting the recommendation rested with the Minister of Finance, and ; as the Minister of Finance at the time he accepted full responsibility. That naturally is a thing that people will expect him to do, for tho responsibility is not one that anyone would volunteer to share. _ Tho rest of 'the story from the point of view of the public, who have had to pay in hard cash for Sin Joseph Ward's failure to raise a loan when, on his own showing, he could have done so, is that Mil. Myers, the Finance Minister of the Mackenzie Government, was saddled with the unenviable task of raising ono of tho most expensive loans in the history of the country. It cost £5 Is. Id. per cent., as against £4 Us. sd. per cent, for the last Ward loan, and £4 ss. 4d. per cent, for the first loan raised by the Hon. Jas. Allen. In addition to that the Myers loan, having a term of only two years, has' already ■ had to be renewed ate, heavy additional cost. Blame- for the whole muddling operation plainly rests upon Sir Joseph Ward, and he has advanced no adequate reason for not adopting the recommendation of his responsible adviser, which was as clearly right as his _ own action, or rather inaction, in the matter . was wrong. One other lame justification which the Leader of the , Opposition attempted yesterday was that because the members of tto present Government were

pledged to reduce borrowing he did not care to raise a loan in anticipation of their coming into office. That is to say, it was not his conwr_n to do what was best in the interests of the country; it was not the public whoso welfare ho had to consider, but instead it was his duty to do what he bolieved his opponents would wish him to do. It is indeed pathetic to find the Leader of the Opposition driven to such shifts as this. Tho exposure made by Me. Allen was bad enough, but the feebleness of the reply put forward by their Leader must have been oyen more discouraging to the Opposition at a. time lik'o tho present than the exposure itself.