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Hokitika Guardian, 6 May 1927, Page 2

The Commonwealth and the Australian States have become chronic borrowers, and not a little of the present prosper-

ity of Australia is due to the lavish and wasteful expenditure of loan funds. The frequency with which Ministers of the Crown and Treasury officials visit London nowadays is instructive. Australia lias borrowed si milch during the lasi few years (hat il is finding dial personal represent at inns have to he made to financiers in outside markets to induce them to lend with anything like their old freedom. Even

with conversion ep.•rations it is not all plain sailing. Australia and Now Zealand will go on borrowing so long as London and New York are willing to lend. The New Zealand Government has gone on the London market for another loan of Cd. 000.009 and one wonders alien the people who have to carry the burden will protest against these annual commitments. The Minister of Finance in the Budget of last Year suggested the tapering off of bnrroing, but little notice need be taken of mat. foi such proposals have been made oil’ and on for I tic* past thirty years. There is no doubt that both Australia and New Zealand are piling up debt- at greater rate and ratio (linn G warranted by the growth of population. Referring to the Australian borrowing fever, Iho Byd n “Bulletin” deals with the subject in its own inimitable style. It says: “A respectable and more or less dull crowd lias the conviction that i lie position is led and may become tragic, but e- i skiers that the only way to political power is to hid as high for (he votes of feels as the other fellows, or higher. Some think that things will last I heir life-time, especially if they aro elderly and have advanced symptoms of one sort or another, and the rest try to think so. or to think they think so. Then there is that vast section which left school too early and devoted itself exclusively to horses in after vears. 11 believes what is easiest, and it is easiest to believe that life is an easy business, and that this land of ours has wonderful assets, including its drought and worked-out gold mines, which will automatically pull il through any emergency.”