MORE ABOUT "COSTLESS CREDIT."

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Issue 47, 11 March 1937, Page 4

MORE ABOUT "COSTLESS CREDIT."

Yet auotber spokesman, in the person of the Member for Waitemata, is on tour telling of all the good things the new Government has done for the people of this country. Among others he boasts of some "£9-million of new credit having been issued without cost to the country and without the raising of a loan. '' In this way he presumably refers to the £6|-million on "Dairy Industry Account" and £l|-million "for other purposes" — so far undisclosed— which appear in the Beserve Bank's latest xeturns as advanced to the Government and as forming items in the Bank's "assets." As has previously been said, the public is kept in complete ignorance as to the terms upon which these advances have. been made. But, setting that aside, why is it that, if this "costless credit" is so easy of manufacture, the Government had this year to impose close on £2-million of extra taxation for the specific purpose of meeting the augmented and new pensions of which Mr. Lyon speaks so proudly?, Surely if there was ever an'object to which "fresh money" of this kind could be appropriately applied it would be to the aihelioration of the social conditions of the people. Yet the Finance Minister had reeourse to the very old-fashioned plan of clapping on some extra taxes. "Why, too, if this costless eash is so readily available, did Mr. Nash tell us in his Budget that for public works — railways and the like — £6million was to be provided out of "loan money," while another £4jmillion would come from (t revenue' ' — virtually another word for taxation, in one form or anothert Then, agains if "costless'' funds can be thus easily found, why is Mr. Savage bogling about providing a paltry million or so for the building of a brid^e to connect Mr. Lyon's own electorate and the country north of it with Auckland city?, It certainly looks as if, at theverybest, there musfc be some limdt, and that a fairly narrow one, even in the eyesofthe Government, to the extent to which this costless credit may be used without destroying the foundations on which it is based. In the meantime, even as far as it has gone, it may be queried whether, by depreciating the value of othercurrency, it may not have had something to do with the greatly increased eost of liying, as to which, by the way, Mr. Lyon is shrewdly silent.