The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1906. A SPENDTHRIFT GOVERNMENT.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3723, 3 November 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1906. A SPENDTHRIFT GOVERNMENT.

In the indecent rush of legislators to get to the Exhibition, the last days of the session of Parliament resolved themselves into a wholesale squandering of public funds without question. The Supplementary Estimates show that the Government is doing its level best to spend any future loans before it gets them and to leave this country bankrupt. Despite the allegations of the Premier that this country is bursting with prosperity, there are indications that no person dare disregard plainly showing that it is time to quit this ruinous extravagance. The Premier, the Chief of the Post Office and Mr Wilson, Private Secretary, together with more or less frill and entourage went to the Postal Conference at Rome.

The Parliament has consented to pay the sum of ,£2,800 for this little spree. Result of the Premier’s trip? Well he ob'.ained the blessed privilege of penny postage with America, a blessed privilege which he could have obtained equally well by staying at home. Unquestionably that trip to Rome was undertaken merely to make the nations believe that we were only second in importance to the Russian Empire or the French Republic or the United States of America An Australian mail service costs £IOOO, but a Postmaster General’s trip costs £2BOO. The estimates showing the cost of Government printing are an eye opener to those who really know what is done for the money. “Printing report and evidence Te Ante Commission” ,£125. This does not include the cost of paper and means the sura was expended for the printing of one thousand five hundred booklets, What becomes of the booklets? Waste-paper baskets every time.

* * * We had the bad taste to send £IOOO to help the millionaires of shaken ‘Frisco, although Roosevelt said the people didn’t want the money. Who sent it ? The people? No. The Government that believes that it is running a continent and not a group of small islands with a small population of honest workers and a sprinkling of political advertisers and windbags. Another one thousand went to the famine-stricken Japs. It would have made roads for the backblocks settlers who are famine - stricken in the . winter because they can’t get stores along the “roads.” The Premier is making sure of his expenses beforehand. He got himself voted £1,500 for a trip Home next year. If Sir Joseph isn’t careful he will yet be considered as great a personage as T. E. Donne or the magnificent Munro. ❖ * *

The biggest- sin on the Supplementary squanderings is the sum of £1963 17 n for expenses connected with the Footballers tour to Great Britain. The team covered itself with glory and did much advertising. It also earned a fabulous sum for the Rugby Union. The Rugby Union had decided to send the team back to New Zealand via America and to pay passages etc. But the Government that ought to be running Asia and twelve millions of people just invited the team to spend all the Government money it wanted. As may be seen by the bill the team certainly availed itself of the offer. Of the people of New Zealand ? Not at all. It was the advertising politician again. He wanted the world to believe that the money was our own, when all the time John Bull holds our bills for amounts that ought to make Parliament go and wear a hair shirt and kick itself twelve times a day in a vital spot.