Wellington Notes.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 55, 2 September 1896, Page 2

Wellington Notes.

(From our own correspondent.) DISOBEYING THE LAW. Mr Seddon's panacea for all the evils that happen is to bring in a Bill. , The Bills usually cause considerable mischief, but leaving out the partisans who have been rewarded with billets, and the proprietor of the wax match factory in Wellington who clears about £12,000 a year out of the monopoly the Seddon Government gave him, I would like to see the man who is any better off for any Bill passed by the present Government. Let that view of the case pass, however, the point is that the bills they do pass are openly and flagrantly broken by themselves to an extent that is positively hair raising. The insolent refusals of Ministers to supply returns of money they spend to Parliament is the subject of complaint at every sitting, but there is another breach of the law which is of serious consequence to every person who has a policy in the Government Life Insurance Office. That department's funds are the property of the policy holders, and the money paid in by them is safeguarded by statutes which are set at defiance by Ministers. It is one of the duties of the officials having charge of those funds to invest them so that they shall return as much profit as is consistent with safe investment, and only two years ago, in 1894, Parliament passed an Act which provides in the plainest possible language that not more than one-fourth of the funds shall be invested in Government securities, or those of local bodies ; and the next clause as explicitly enacts that the other threefourths shall be lent out (1) on the security of policies, or (2) on first mortgages on freehold property. The department could get 5 or 6 per cent on these latter, and as the whole of its calculations were made on a 4 per cent basis, and the expenses of management amount to abont 1£ per cent, it will be seen that there would not be a great deal left in the shape of bonuses unless the rate of interest is kept up. A great blow was aimed at the institution by the Advances to Settlers Act coming into competition with the department and lowering the rate of interest. Some few people have, no doubt, benefited by that scheme of the Honorable Joseph George Ward by getting more money on their holdings than they were worth, but that is a matter the colony as a whole will have to suffer for in the long run. Our immediate concern is with the people who have been induced to insure their lives and pay their premiums into tbe State Insurance Office by representations from accredited agents that the funds were so well invested that the institution was far safer than any other one doing business in tbe colony. Let us see how the law has been observed and these representation borne out by facts. State paper 8 10 presented to Parliament this session gives a return of the public securities and it in there shown that the Government Life Insurance funds are invested as follows : — £ In Government Securities 1,075,210 „ Mortgages 734,667 „ Foreclosures 32,306 „ Land and Offices ... 135,239 Total 1,977,423 Instead of one fourth only being invested in Government securities as provided by the Act passed by the Liberal Government in 1894 over one half has ' been grabbed and where is it ? In political roads and bridges, in estates bought I by the Hon John McKenzie which he is now ploughing up to sow turnips, or because no tenants will occupy the land at the rent he has put on it ; on harbonr I works, in borough loans, river boards, I and so on ; some of it at 3f per cent, some at 4, and more than half of the total sum at 4i per cent. Now the same Hon. John McKenzie who has collared £609,066 of trust f nnds for his desperate but futile attempts to settle tbo people on tbe land, declared last week that tbe lending departments would have shortly to face the problem of only [ receiving 3 per cent for the money Government had borrowed from them. When this is carried out the Government Life Insurance's income which is now a year less than it would be if the law wera obeyed will suffer a further loss of £5000 a year at least, and tben the bottom will have dropped out of their finance, which is built upon the assumption that their accumulated funds will not return less than 4 per cent. Either that or the policy holders must be prepared to live longer than they were estimated to and so pay more premiums. That is the position of the department as brought about by the alleged self-reliant non-borrowing humbugs who have collared every shilling they could lay their piratical hands on legally, if possible, if not— then illegally.