GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2708, 6 September 1894, Page 2

GOVERNMENT ADVERTISING.

On last Tuesday Sir Robert Stout asked the following question in Parliament:— “ Is it true that the boycott applied by the Government to 'Certain. Opposition newspapers in regard to ordinary Government departmental advertisements, has been also applied regarding bankruptcy advertisements paid for by the creditors of estates V’ Sir Robert Stout is only injuring himself by the adoption of such tactics as these. Unless we are greatly mistaken, similar accusations were made against himself when he was Premier. At any rate, either the Grey Government, of which Sir Robert was a member, or the Stout-Vogel Government boycotted certain newspapers, including the Evening Post, and the same noise was made about it that Sir Robert Stout is making now. That being so, it ill becomes Sir Robert to adopt such a line of attack on the Government as he is adopting, but what makes it still more reprehensible is that it is not true. The Government know that no paper in this colony supports them more cordially than we do, yet in the very thick of the election we had to complain of the fact that advertisements to which we were entitled, and which ought to have beeu supplied to us, were not given to us. We can say this honestly, and our books will prove, it that our receipts from Government advertising have fallen off 50 per cent, since the present Ministry took office. With regard to bankruptcy notices, before the change took place a year or two ago, we got the whole of them as a matter of course, but to our astonishment the Official Assignee suddenly ceased to utilise our columns as an advertising mediums On making inquiries as to the causb, the Assignee showed us his letter of instructions, in which he was told to advertise ouly in the Timaru Herald. We complained of this, and it was only after some correspondence, in which we had to show that it would be inconvenient for the people of the district to have their own local paper ignored, that the .Deputy Official Assignee was instructed to advertise local notices in our columns. These are facts which we can prove by the correspondence in our possession. These are our own experiences, and we think they give a complete answer to the spiteful “ heckling” of Sir Robert Stout, Yet this is not all. We owe it to Mr Alexander Kelma'n, of Geraldine Flat, that Land and Income Tax notices , are given to us at all. He at one time complained that owing to the notices not having appeared in our columns he was inconvenienced, and since then we have! had, as a general rule, one insertion of Land and Income Tax notices. We do not, of course, presume to say that all papers that support the Government are treated as stingily as we are, but we can say this, that the present Government have cut down advertising in every direction, and that no paper can be getting as much as they used to get from previous Governments, At anyrate, we can say without fear of contradiction, that we owe nothing to the Government as regards advertising; on the contrary, we are the loser considerably by their presence in office, but we do not blame them, as we know that they are doing their best in the interest of economy.