CONFOUNDING THE CRITICS

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2296, 2 November 1914, Page 4

CONFOUNDING THE CRITICS

The time devoted by the House of Representatives to the Imprest Debate on Saturday was not by any means wasted. In its leading features the debate amounted to a preliminary chnter over the ground that will be. traversed in . the election campaign, and the various comparisons instituted between the achievements of the Government and the professions of its. opponents' have a permanent value. On many occasions during the session Ministei'B have hud to listen in silence to a deluga of talk from thnir opponents in order that the work of Parliament might be carried, on with all possible dispatch, but on, Saturday ono Minister after another retorted upon his critics with an array of facts and figures which completely demoralised the critics. The broad results of the debate were a sweeping vindication of tho administration by the Reform Government .of the , principal branches of State activity and an accompanying exposure of the weak and pointless nature of the Opposition criticism. -It,was-an unhappy time for the critics, and by the end of the sitting their discomfiture was so painfully apparent that they_ harcU ly attempted to hide it. Their last demonstration of the night was a petulant protest against being compelled to start.work again at eleven o'clock on Moiiday morning, and it must bo admitted that in the circumstances there was. spmo excuse for their feeling tired. ' . ■ . One of the first subjects opened by Sir Joseph Ward was that /of land settlement. He relied upon a statistical resumi showing that the number of settlers placed upon the land and the area settled had declined to some extent since ho left office. The figures as far as they went' rnay have been accurate enough, but' as presented by the Leadqr of the Opposition they were .quite illusory and misleading. He ignored' in the most barefaced way. the. fact that Crown lande, which usod to bulk so largely in the annual settlement returns, are now almost exhausted. When Mr. Massey come into office- he found only one hundred thousand acres of first-class Grown lands available for settlement, and this of course makes it'impossible that settlement of this class should be continued at its former .rate. A true indication of the enterprise and activity of the respective Governments in promoting settlement is 'to be found, not in reviewing the progres-' siye exhaustion of Crown lands, but in a comparison of operations under the Land for Settlements Act and other measures which, provide for an indefinite extension of settlement. The results of such a comparison are decisive. In the year 1910-11, the Ward Administration provided 14,399 acres under the' Land for Settle ments Act, while in 1913-14 the Massey Government provided no ■ less than 141,002. acres. That is to say, the present Government- multiplied the total of its predecessors by ten. Another gratifying feature of the position relating to settlement is the rate at which money is coming in from tenants who are acquiring the freehold, for cash or on deferred payment, under the Land Acts of 1912 and 1913, and which can bo utilised for the purchase of new land for settlers. Already £236,958 has been received from tnis source, aad the Prime Minister estimates that when the new Jaw. comes into full operation it will be unnecessary to go outside i;he country for a single penny of the money required for the acquisition of land for settlement. The Leader of the Opposition provoked an equally damaging, retort when he sought to show that the vot-. ing of money upon tho Public Works Estimates, under the Reform regim.6 was a mere pretence and that the money actually spent was only a fraction of the amount voted. The Hon. W. Fraser, :in dealing with this assertion, brushed aside non-; essentials and compared the actual expenditure upon public works by the present Government and by its predecessors. He showed that during- the last two years of the Ward Government the total expenditure upon public works was £745,672, as against £838,587 in the'first two years of the present Government's term. In addition to this the Government is making provision by a special loan for the construction of backblocks roads and bridges. These are a few typical examples from a night of debate in which' the Opposition timo and again drew down upon themselves a crushing retort to which they had no answer ready because none was available. Their guns were spiked, as they almost always are when ( the opponents they traduce have leisure and opportunity to meet them on equal terms.: