MATTERS POLITICAL—SEIZING SINKING FUNDS OF LOCAL BODIES.

Feilding Star, Volume XVII, Issue 243, 18 April 1896, Page 2

MATTERS POLITICAL—SEIZING SINKING FUNDS OF LOCAL BODIES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The Colonial Treasurer last session in the House denied Sir .Robert Stout's allegations of having seized the sinking fund of the local bodies, but the Premier in his speech at Kuniara a few days ago admitted they had been paid into the consolidated revenue, and said "it was done in accordance with the law, and if the law was wrong then those who complained should alter the law." The last expression is an insult to every ratepayer in the colony, for how can the present Opposition alter the law. Mr Seddon and his party alone can alter it. - If a man borrowed say £200 from a building society and paid it off, principal and interest, in say ten years. What would he think of such society, if he were told that he still owed the £200 to the society, owing to some technical flaw in the agreement, and that he must still go on paying interest for the money 1 He would say that the directors of the society were a set of unprincipled scoundrels. Will the ratepayers of the colony, through their representatives the local bodies, borrow money from the Government—who get it from the London money lender—and agree, to pay back the principal and interest in twenty-six years ; but the Government have seized and used the sinking funds of the said local bodies, i.e., part of the principal paid off up to date, and, we the ratepayers of the colony, will find at the end of the twenty-six years that we shall still owe the principal to the London money lenders. Many a lawyer has been struck off the rolls and put in gaol for having borrowed money from A, to lend to B, which latter pays back the money to the lawyer, who keeps it and uses it for his own purposes instead of handing it over to A. We can't send the Government to gaol, but every honest man can help to turn them out of office at the nexc election. I am, etc., George Wilks. Feilding, April 18th, 1896.