WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 July 1921, Page 6

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

THE LOAN. PROSPECTS AND PURPOSES. (Special Correspondent.) Wellington, June 29. Ministers here have no anxiety in regard to the success of the five million loan. In formation from London is to the effect that the time is opportune for the floatation —as opportune, that is, as any time can be under existing conditions—and that New Zealand’s credit stands high in the money market. The Dominion is reaping some of the material fruit of the effort and sacrifice it made during the*war. The newspapers are discussing the purposes to which the loan is to be applied, but at the moment this appears to be a little superfluous. The Government has authorities to borrow a considerably larger amount than five millions for public works, chiefly hydro electric installation and railways, and by the time it has restored from the present loan the amounts temporarily transferred from the Consolidated Fund it is not likely to have any considerable sum going a’begging. CITY FINANCE. Mr. R. A. Wright, the new Mayor of Wellington, is an administrator of the old school, as he says himself, and he sees only one way of putting the city’s much disturbed financial house in order. The substantial increase in the valuation has saved the Mayor and his council from the necessity of raising the rates, and, indeed, has enabled them to make trifling reductions in certain directions; but Mr. Wright is not going to allow the sports grounds, the golf links and the Zoo to be any longer burdens upon the general body of ratepayers. The people who use the sports ground and the golf links are to pay for their sport, and the folk who want to gaze at “bears and tigers” are to do so at their own expense. In the same way people who cannot afford to pay higher tram fares are to walk. It is the way of the old school. RICH BUT SHORT OF CASH. The Post, in reviewing the city’s financial position says it reveals an abundance of assets and a shortage of cash. it proceeds to an emphatic endorsement of the Mayor’s policy. “The tramways, the electric lighting, the Zoo, the reserves and the organ recitals,” it says, “have revenues of their own, and the council should be inflexible in the principle that the tramways and the electric lighting should pay their own way.” Nor does it see any reason why the golf links, the music or the Zoo should be relieved from this necessity, though it has some lingering doubts about the efficacy of high prices, high taxes and higli charges to cure the financial ills of the. city. Other critics, less careful of the feeling of the Mayor and his councillors, are declaring that so far as the tramways and the electric light are concerned, higher charges would mean less revenue and that the real need of these services is better management. WASTING MONEY.

Mr. M. A. Carr, the president of the Wellington Chamber of Commerce, moved by some remarks made by the Acting Prime Minister when excusing the growth of expenditure upon the Public Service, has returned to his appeal for frank and honest retrenchment. “While the Government recognised that reduction in the expenditure was necessary,” a condensation of his remarks runs, “and retrenchment was postponed and the load given was not that required by the country. The pruning knife should be applied in all Government departments, and retrenchment should start at the top, not from the bottom.” His colleagues on the council of the chamber are not very eager in their support of Mr. Carr’s protest, they realising, no doubt, the magnitude of the task with which Sir Francis Bell is confronted, but unless some one in authority dares to deal with this great problem drastically its public service will become an intolerable burden to the Dominion.