PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

Hokitika Guardian, 3 January 1927, Page 4

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE

HOW THE MONEY GOES. (By TAXPAYER.) tl Tin- Minister of Finance lias iterated and re-iterated again and again since i his assumption of office the need tor the utmost economy in public expenditure ; his colleagues have lost no opportunity of endorsing and emphasising the words of the custodian of the Treasury; bankers have declared it is only by all classes of the community exercising the strictest frugality that the financial stability of the Dominion can lx* maintained, and people at large, professional men, farmers, traders ami workers, have been given to understand that their only hope for the future lies in the renunciation of every form of extravagance. A similar warning has been sounded in Australia by responsible authorities who have exceptional opportunities of ascertaining the facts and on no occasion to exaggerate their significance. Speaking at the annual meeting of the shareholders of the Bank of New South Wales held in Sydney a little while ago, Mr Thomas Bucklaiid, the cliariman of the hoard of directors, declared that so long as the Governments and the local bodies of the Commonwealth continued to dissipate the taxpayers’ money upon unproductive works and unnecessary services so long would the credit of the country he in the greatest jeopardy and the country itself on the brink of chaotic trouble. Such a policy might create a fictitious prosperity for the moment, hut it could not he continued indefinitely and already there were some very unpleasant indications that the well of borrowing was nQt bottomless. WHAT IS BEING DONE? ! In view of these statements, which apply as appropriately to the finances of New Zealand as they do to those of Australia, it would be ntoresting to learn just how far the ministerial heads of State departments in this country are practising in their official capacities the precepts they seek to impress upon a listless public. Mr Bucklaiid states with quite brutal candour that much of the excessive expenditure in the Commonwealth is due to the readiness of the State Governments to borrow amt spend for the promotion of their own popularity. It may be said quite confidently that in the Dominion no statement of this kind would bo justified. Now Zealand Ministers, whatever their major and minor shortcomings may be, are honest. It is to be feared, however. that entrusted with the expenditure of millions, they are apt to become a little careless, or perhaps a little over-goncrous, in the distribution of the hundreds and thousands thaL makeup the larger sum. There always are examples of this kind of thing running through the public accounts. Some weeks ago the -Minister of Agriculture announced that the Government’s guarantee to the fruitgrowers last year oT a certain price for their exported apples would involve the State in an expenditure of about .C 90,000. Now the Minister has agreed to pay some £3,000 or more to cover the cost of exploiting one of the provincial markets at Home. The taxpayer will ho lucky if he gets out of the adventure for £IO,OOO. Me is to cover the risk of the exporters again this season out of his sadly depleted pocket. SOME OF THE LEAKAGE. Then flu* public must- have noticed thaL during the last year or two a practice of sending civil servants abroad to learn their business lias 'become a very conidorahh* tax upon the State. A recent striking instance of this costly method of education is the dispatch of I lie head of the Treasury Department to Loudon to learn, it seems, how to keep his accounts and how to float loans. This gentleman’s predecessor, aspecially capable officer with very wide and varied experience, residing in Wellington and still in the prime of life, surely could have taught his .successor all it was necessary for him to know. Failing this, the Prime -MinisferP and the High Commissioner were in London at the time, and it is inconceivable that these two gentlemen between them could not have collected the necessary information and convoyed it to the head of the Department here. During the last year or two there has been a constant flow, outwards and homewards, of civil servants of higher or lower degree, in search of information and preferment. The now Railway Board scarcely had begun to function before half its members were abroad inspecting the railways of other countries, and. incidentally drawing substantial travelling allowances. The Rural Credits Commission scarcely comes under this category, lmt if the High Commissioner could iiot'hnvo obtained all the information its three members collected at one tenth; of the cost of their outings, then he is c the resourceful man we all have sun-h-osod him to,he. ’ , THE GOVERNMENT'S OPPOTI- - 'There arc many other channels of wasteful expenditure, perhaps insignificant enough individually hut considerable in the agregate, which ought . to he definitely closed. Railway services are being maintained at a loss far exceeding any obi ini the communities concerned may have upon the State ; subsidies are being paid to local bodies 'and even to private institutions that have no right to expect assistance from the national purse; many State departments and offices arc overstaffed and over-equipped in other respects; other departments and offices are under-staffed and insufficiently equipped to an extent that gravely affects their efficiency. State arid departmental trading enterprises are being run at :i loss without the deficiencies being frankly disclosed, and the State system of hook keeping is inadequate and unilhiminative. The tendency of all this is to leave the finances of the country in the hands of the l heads of departments rather than under the control of Parliament. Probably no other Minister of Finance I since the days of dolm Ballancc lias had so firm a grasp of the intricate details of the Treasury as Air Downie Stewart has ; but the accumulated practices and precedents of three decades present an obstacle to. reform which no Minister standing alone can. hopo to overcome. He requires to have the force of public opinion and the unanimity of Parliament behind him. Given these conditions, frankly and nil reservedly, the Minister in a single year would he able to cut down tho annual expenditure by at least a million without impairing the efficiency of the public service in the slightest degree.