COLLARING THE SINKING FUND.

Taranaki Daily News, 29 September 1919, Page 6

COLLARING THE SINKING FUND.

- MINISTER JUSTIFIES PREDICTION. (From our Special Correspondent.) 5 Wellington, Sept. 25. ' When Sir Joseph Ward established a sinking fund which ultimately would have extinguished the public debt without placing an undue burden upon the taxpayers the financial authorities at Home, declared it to be a sound, statesmanlike measure that reflected high credit upon its author and eventually would prove of great benefit to the Dominion. But the Reform critics viewed the matter in a different light. They admitted it was natural, even praise. 1 worthy, that the country should wish ' to pay its debts, but they ridiculed the " idea of setting money aside for such a " purpose while further loans' were being 1 raised. In any case, they said, as if to ■ " make their argument cover the whole " situation, the sinking fund accumulations never would be safe from the rapacity of n, needy Minister of Finance. Both Mr. Massey and Sir James Allen pressed this point with fervid eloquence and wearisome iteration. THE MINISTER'S TEMPTATION. And it all has come true. In raising his war loans, Sir Joseph Ward made them all, from first to last, subject to his sinking fund scheme. His optimism , led him to believe, not only that New 9 Zealand could get what money it rej quired to carry it through the great . crisis in which it was involved, but aIBO e that it could pay back the money it , borrowed. And he went further than 3 this. In framing his taxation proposals ;_ lie was hound to keep on the safe side — to maintain the strong finance which had been so warmly extolled by his friends and his opponents alike—and when the I war ended he found himself in possession of a surplus of fourteen or fifteen millions in London. This, after certain - deductions and adjustments, he proposed ) to add to the accumulated sinking fund i for the extinction of the public debt, t which, of course, had been enormously 1 increased by the war. ~ ' HE FALLS. Fourteen millions sterling is a large ; sum. It probably is a much larger ona than Mr. Massey and Sir James Allen had in mind when they predicted that the first needy Minister of Finance, unable to devise, any-other means of obtaining supplies, would violent hands on the sinking fund. At any rate, it is a lure they have been unable to resist. They have collared the fourteen millions for the purpose of promoting soldier settlement, a work more likely than any other to excuse their renunciation of the trust to which they succeeded, and their newspaper friends are applauding their action as being more effective! mid practical than would have been the discharge of the country's obligations. More effective and practical, in one sense, it may be, but in another it certainly will not. iS'lie provision for soldier settlement was assured in any case, and the raid on the sinking fund was merely the expedient of the makeshift financier.