A WATCH ON WAR EXPENDITURE

Dominion, Volume 36, Issue 33, 3 November 1942, Page 4

A WATCH ON WAR EXPENDITURE

It is to be hoped that the newly-appointed Minister in Charge of War Expenditure (Mr. Hamilton) will give early indication of his attitude toward the proposal put forward by his predecessor (Mr. Holland) for the setting up of supervising committees. Mr. Holland acquainted the public with this proposal —and, incidentally, with the difficulty he had encountered in making it public—when speaking to his no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives on October 14. It provided for the appointment of committees, comprising outside experts as well as Parliamentary representatives—one to study possible economies in war expenditure, the other to investigate prospective expenditure. The merit of this proposal is in no, way affected by the-transfer of the War Expenditure portfolio. It remains timely and valuable.

New Zealand’s planned expenditure this year, on the war effort alone, is set down at £133,000,000 —more than two and a half million pounds every week. Much of this spending is for work of an urgent nature, in which the cost factor has to become of secondary importance. This, however, is all the more reason why costs and methods, wherever possible, should be given careful and systematic scrutiny. Mr. Hamilton is likely to-discover —as Mr. Holland obviously did during his term of office —that it is difficult, if not impossible, for adequate supervision of so enormous and complex a field of expenditure to be exercised by departments which have other important routine tasks; or by the Minister himself*who is constantly preoccupied with Cabinet duties. This was long ago recognized in Britain; indeed Mr. Holland’s proposal, in effect, is for the adoption of the British committee system. It should commend itself to Mr. Hamilton’s strong sense of business prudence, just as it has won the wide approval and support of responsible citizens and taxpayers.