Vanished Surplus

Hokitika Guardian, 24 May 1921, Page 4

Vanished Surplus

i (Lyttelton Times). I The taxpayers having provided the Government with a surplus of some six millions sterling, which it is putting it mildly to say they could ill afford, are now informed by the statesman who is ■ in charge of the Treasury that theie : is no money available for public works. The other day the Acting Minister for Finance said there was no money for houses. The civil servants have been informed that there is no money for increased wages. We do not mind about the civil servants, for we think they are far too numerous, and many of them are over-paid for the work they peiform. But where has the surplus disappeared, or almost disappeaied, to. We are told that part of it has already been transferred to public works, that some is banked away against a rainy day when interest payments will have to be made, and that among other things the Hauraki Plains and Rnngitaiki drainage accounts have been supplemented —so that non no balance is available for transfer for public works expenditure.” The inherent weakness of this statement is that it is not accompanied by arithmetic. Six millions of money—or rather nearly seven, for the Public Works Fund bad a large credit balance last February, according to Mr Massey—cannot vanish into thin air, and the purposes that Sir Francis Bell says some of this huge amount have been put to will not account for anything like the balance of revenue over expenditure which an oppressed community has placed at the disposal of those who misgovern the Dominion.

Less than half the surplus would provide .Mr Coates with sufficient cash to use all the labour and material he can secure for a year. It would also pay the whole of the interest hill lor the current quarter. In addition it would finance the Haiiraki Plains and Kangitaki Drainage schemes for several years. The expenditure in 1910-20 on the Haurahi Plains settlement was £(>8,000, towards which £26,000 was received by way of rents, sales of land, and other receipts. In the same year £58,000 was spent on the Rangitaiki drainage and the fund was in credit £50,000 at the end of the twelve-month. The only way that Sir Francis Hell can convince people possessed of ordinary intelligence that the surplus has vanished is by setting out in plain figures the directions taken by its flight. There is too much mystery about the present Government, and far too much about its management of the finances. There is no mystery in the minds of the people concerning the fact of the shockingly heavy taxation they have to hear, hut when the proper time and conditions make it right that they should know the uses that are made of their cash, Ministers will give nothing hut obscure generalities and statements that appear to he hopelessly wioiig. The people supplied the Government in the last financial year with a taxrevenue (as distinct from revenue derived from services) of some £22,500,090, which is equal to nearly £l9 per head of the population, or I'd 10s per head more than was paid in the financial year during which the war ended. Taxation in New Zealand has increased 50 per cent since the armistice was signed—since the emergency and the peril for which war taxation was increased had passed away. Excessive taxation produced last year, according to the Audi-tor-General, a surplus of six 'millions, hut according to the e M mister of Finance, the Treasury is empty, and public works cannot be provided for. A Government that cannot do better than this, if it had any self-respect, would resign.