THE SECOND BUDGET

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 86, 8 October 1931, Page 14

THE SECOND BUDGET

FURTHER OPINIONS

STRICT ECONOMY URGED

(By Telegraph.) (Spocial to "Tho Evenino Post.") AUCKLAND, This Day. "The second Budget of tho year will bring home to many thousands the reality of the statement often repeated tkat saerificeiiiire demanded of the individual to meet the national emergency," says the "New Zealand Herald." After reviewing the proposals in detail, tho "Herald" continues: "A country that is asked to accept so very heavy a burden of additional taxation has a right to expect that the maximum saving shall be achieved by reduction in the cost of publio services. It looks to a contraction of those services as a means of preventing the burden of taxation from becoming permanently intolerable. "The position now disclosed is an estimated shortage of £1,595,000, and the Government proposes that £400,000 of this deficiency shall be met by pruning the departmental outlay. About a fourth of the financial need, that is, will be met in this way. Is it enough, even as a beginning of a more resolute application of the pruning knife? That is to be very seriously questioned, and it ought to be deemed only a beginning. "Tho enormous increase in taxation is an emergency measure, and it can be tolerated only as such. To maintain it at that level would be crippling. At the earliest possible moment there should begin a progressive and considerable lightening of the load. This implies that a policy of rigorous economy must be applied to the cost of Government, not as a passing expedient in order to save for a financial frolic ere long, but as an established and persistent means of progressively lessening tho amount demanded from the taxpayer. For at least five years the strictest economy ought to be observed in Governmental expenditure, no matter ■what political party is in office."