WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 30 July 1920, Page 4

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE BUDGET. LOANS AND TAXATION. (Our Special Correspondent). WELLINGTON, July 28 The Budget .delivered in the House of Representatives last night was a plain, unimaginative statement of the financial position of the Dominion. Mr Massey, indulging in neither fireworks nor heroics, simply presented the facts and figures prepared for him by the officers of the Treasury and the heads of departments in the simplest words in which they could be clothed, frequently without commentjand never with ?imperceptible emphasis. This, of course, was just as it should have been. The Budget itself was a business man’s statement to a business people and it required ho elucidation by the way. But from the galleries’ point of view it was unusually dull. ' THE PUBLIC DEBT.

Not that the document was lacking in matters of vital importance and vast to talk in the biggest figures that ever have been employed by a Minister of Finance in this country. He showed that the gross public debt had grown during tSie previous six years, including of course th« war period, from £99,730,127 to £201,170,755, and the amount per head of population from £9l l’Os 2d to £163 3s. The last comparison, by the way, puts the position scarcely correctly. For 1914 the amount per head of the gross debt is given and for 1920 the amount per head of the net debt. LOANS AND TAXATION.

On the top of all this the country is to borrow this year £14,800,000 in addition to £10,000,000 required during the year for the renewal of maturing loans. The renewal of the maturing loans need not add to the magnitude of the gross debt, but the £14,800,000 will reprasent new money and new obligations. Mr Massey has not fully disclosed his taxation proposals, but their nature may be judged from the fact that railways are to produce nearly a quarter of a million more than they did last year, post and telegraph morf than half a million more, and Customs well over a million more. THE PROPER SPIRIT.

But JVIr Massey, to his credit, is by no means- dismayed by the accumulating burdens of the country. He shows that the money raised during the war period was not all absorbed by the great struggle in which the Empire was engaged. Of the total of £IOB,000,000 odd, over nine millions were expended upon public works, over nine millions on soldiers’ settlement, nearly three and a half millions on land for settlement, and other largo sums on productive undertakings. The Prime Minister has no fears for the future. The great resources of the Dominion and the industry and courage of its people are going ta surmount all difficulties and lead the way to a new and greater era of prosperity.