WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Hokitika Guardian, 21 August 1922, Page 1

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE FINANCIAL DEBATE BEGINS NEXT WEEK. SPECIAL TO GUARDIAN.

• WELLINGTON, Aug. 18,

The Prime Minister was ready to lie-, gin the debate on the Budget to-night, hut the leader of the Opposition pleaded hard for delay and finally Mr Massey consented to a postponement till Tuesday. Mr Wilford will not lack for material. His difficulty will be to make a choice from the multitude of subjects that arc open for discussion. The increased expenditure, the lessened revenue, the return of deficits, the intangible economies, the new methods of paying old debts, the vanishing surpluses, the growing unauthorised expenditure, all will he tempting topics to a. politician still with his spurs to win on the field of finance. But just now the country wants helpful suggestions rather than destructive criticism and the leader of the Opposition might easily over-do his part. Matters are not going to be mended by exaggerating the difficulties by which the Dominion is beset. Optimism, as the Prime Minister has well learned, is the note that appeals to the public just now, arid though it need not ho thumped with an undiscriminating hand it is the only note that will lead on to vietorv at the approaching elections. PUBLIC WORKS.

The “Dominion” is in the field early with an explanation, amounting almost to an apology, why the expenditure upon public works during the current year may exceed even the enormous total recorded last year. “No doubt, it says, “this lavish outlay is necessary in existing conditions. To the standing need of vigorously forwarding the development of the Dominion, there is an added incentive, the need of providing work for as many as possible of those who are displaced from private employment. At tho same time public works expenditure on the scale it has attained evidently calls for very careful handling.” The expenditure last year amounted to £5.461,407 ns compared with £3,141,107 in 1920-21 and £2,021,153 in 1910-20 and this year, it is expected, this huge total will lie exceeded. One of the regrettable features of the situation is that the necessity of providing work for the unemployed lias led to a very wide distribution of the expenditure with the certainty of obtaining less satisfactory results than would have been the case bad the Minister been able to carry out his policy of concentration. That policy, of course, has gone to the four winds.

SIB JOSEPH WARD. Sir Joseph Ward’s name is still being bandied about in connection with the impending general election. His definite statement that lie will not accept the invitation to contest the Kaiapoi seat seems only to have added to the activity of the gossips who are anxious to provide for his political future. It never seems to have occurred to them that after, thirty-two or thirtythree years of strenuous service in Parliament, Sir Joseph may he finding the life of a private citizen, with plenty of interests to keep him from rusting, entirely congenial. They are now as signing him a city scat, either in ‘Wellington or Auckland, and talking of the resuscitation of the Liberal-Labour party on the old lines. But people who probably know more than these Imsybodies do about liia present attitude towards politics, say that Sir Joseph while not putting life entirely behind him, is not at all anxious to re-tenter the fray. Least of all would lie like to he the cause of further discussions among the Opposition. The latest accounts of his health are of an entirely satisfactory character and finally dispose of the stories which from time to time have perturbed liis friends.

BREACH OF PRIVILEGE. The House spent nearly five hours yesterday in discussing the Prime Minister’s motion declaring, in effect, that the action of Mr McCombs in stating to the Speaker that there was nothing improper in the explanatory note lie bad attached to his Proportional Representation Bill before its distribution to members, whereas it contained a defamatory reflection upon the Boundaries Commissioners, constituted a breach of privilege. There never can have been any serious doubt that the member for Lyttelton bad been guilty of a very grave indiscretion, but bis Lals our colleagues maintained stoutly that lie was within Ins rights in using the alteration of the boundaries of the Kaiapoi electorate as an illustration of the sort of thing that might happen under a defective representation system, and most of the Liberal members, while deprecating Mr McCombs’s methods, seemed disposed to take a kindly view of his intentions. Ministers and their supporters, however, were very emphatic about the matter and the motion declaring that the member had been guilty of a breach of privilege was carried by forty-four votes to twenty-one. Further developments are expected.