THEORY OF GOVERNMENT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 633, 9 April 1929, Page 16

THEORY OF GOVERNMENT

LOCAL BODIES AND THEIR FUNCTIONS UNIVERSITY LECTURES Some eighty citizens, including a very fair sprinkling of local body members, attended at the University Hall last evening to hear Professor H. Belshaw open a series of lectures on local government. The Mayor, Mr. G. Baildon, the town clerk, Mr. J. S. Brigham, Mr. J. A. C. Allum, chairman of the Transport Board, and a number of city councillors were present. Professor Belshaw, who was introduced by Mr. Kenneth Mackenzie, said he had no intention of making the lectures of the popular variety, each complete in itself. The problems of local body finances were so interlocked that the various aspects had to be carried on from one lecture to another. He outlined the course which he would follow and which would include discussions on the difference between local body. Government and private finance; principles of taxation and methods of collection; land taxation in New Zealand and elsewhere; local body indebtedness; reasons why this had grown in recent years; the relative value of loans and taxes; methods of raising and liquidation of loans; and the methods of reduction by conversion and so on. The lecturer then went on to the first of his lectures, dealing with the necessity for local bodies and Government, and discussing the work they had had to undertake. The finance of local bodies now ap-proached-the magnitude of national finance, said Professor Belshaw. In 1918 State expenditure, including that on railways, was £15,000,000 and in 1926 £23,500,000. In that period local body expenditure rose from £7,000.000 to £21,000,000. It was now almost as great as national expenditure and was increasing far more rapidly. In the same way taxation increased by 40 per cent, between 1917 and 1926, whereas rates increased by over 100 per cent. State indebtedness was £151,000.000 in 1918 and £246.000,000 in 1926. Local body indebtedness rose from £27,500,000 to £59,500,000 in that period, the percentage increases here being, roughly, 50 and 100 respectively. The lecturer outlined extensively the theories which should lie behind the problems of local government. Many principles upon which practice should be based did not emerge from common sense or practice alone. They required, as did the investigations of the physicist, formulation on a basis of numerous complex factors which did not come within the range of any one individual’s experience and which needed more than common sens® to arrange id qualify.