From Parliamentary Papers.

Manawatu Herald, 24 July 1894, Page 3

From Parliamentary Papers.

The Chairman of the Board of Land Purchase Commissioners reports that they had during the past twelve months 102 offers of land, covering a total of 918,266 acres, and the total area recommended for purchase was 83,464 acres, and only 9,113 acres have been bought !

Treating the estates as a whole; the capital invested in purchase, |^ 38ad-making, administration, &c, is £89,117, and the return is at present 8.8 per cent. When all the lands are let the annual return is computed to be 6.8 per cent,

In 1868 there were only 05 Post Offlca Savings Banks open, at the end of lasfc year there were 327. The average amount of each deposit in 1868 was JEI4 18s lid, in 1893 only ill 15s lid. Last year there Were 202,276 deposits of the value of £2,886,089 and 186,739 withdrawals of the value of £2,122,521. At the close of the year 122,684 accounts remained open, with £3,< 241,998 standing to their credit, the average amount to the credit of each accottnt being over £26. The cost of the management of all this is said to be only £6500.

The Auditor- General does not approve of the way the Public Trust Office accounts are kept, he says, in his report they are " unsatisfactory." The Audit made 847 queries and 820 instances the errors have been admitted and corrected. At the conclusion of a very able report Mr Fitzgerald says "For more than twenty years this control was exercised over the Public Trust Office without complaint or hindrance to the business of the office. It is so exercised still over the Government Insurance Office. The Public Trust Office alone stands in the anomalous position of being relieved from a control which is imposed on every other department dealing with moneys which are supplied by or guaranteed by the tax-payers of the country."

The Public Trustee has replied in a peculiar manner, asserting that the Auditor-General's report may now be oalled " the annual attack by Mr Fitzgerald on my administration of tfc.Publio Trust Office." The gentleman is more than slightly puffed up, 3s he says "when I was .in charge of the Postal accounts of the colony and when these accounts had become the model which they have ever since remained 1" He appears to be sufficiently insurbordinate as to be impertinent, as in another portion of his reply he asserts " the colonial, balance-sheets,- which Mr Fitzgerald has himself prepared, independently of the Treasury, serve but as examples to pur beginners in financial inquiry of the circumspec.tion with Which figures must be aGqegfetdreven from sources supposed to |>BsJ>infalHWe!"v Writing of the emftiy-.&entioned by the .Auditor*.

GenTefra,!," the Trustee says,

Post Office accounts, in which errors have to be adjusted in the manner in -which errors are now adjusted in the Publio Trust Office accounts, and in which, as the instructions recognise, errors are unavoidable, would' be estimated to ba marvellously well-kept if the errors were no more numerous and serious than these." Seeing that the Trustee olaims credit for initiating both of these accounts the comparison appears of little value, in fact endorses the objeotion of the AuditorGeneral. '

Parliament has to consider the report and, reply, but it is evident from the correspondence that Mr W^rjburtbri is a most determined, if not obstinate man, as he admits. Mr Fitzgerald, say some year or two back-that in this Public Trust Office there was no cash book at all in the serein which the term is used by professorial accountants, kept, that alt the entries in the ledgers, whether cajjh.br journal entries were made from loose unnumbered slips, and from no other book. Mr Fitzgerald •tates that the late Mr Ballance in4tifr£dm to the charge and after full discussion' directed a cash-book BhoufiT be brought into use in the TrusHMfice. This book has since beett opened but no entries are made from U to any other book in the office, leaving the system as prior to the late Mr Ballance's interference. This tht Trustee admits as he writes "ibHbi Premier's peace sake, the only book I am keeping as the result of rae^coinpromise is a book which dotes" not disturb a single one of my original arrangements, and of which the only merits are that the book is noMtt'the way, and is not so unwieldy: as are the books usually approved by the Audit."