THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1907. GOVERNMENT FATUITY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8988, 25 November 1907, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1907. GOVERNMENT FATUITY.

— + — The last of the Exhibition has been ' heard—until at any rate next session. On Saturday evening—practically the close of the present session—the return of receipts and expenditure of the great "international'" show was laid upon the table. There was no opportunity to discuss it, so it goes into th.3 Journals of the House an un • challenged document The outstanding feature of the return is that ths Government admit a deficit of £87,(517. This is about the loss Mr Massey predicted, but the Premier always scouted the idea. It turns cut, however, that the Leader of the Opposition in this as in many other matters financial was right, and the Minister of Finance wrong- or misleading. When the idea of an International Exhibition was originally mooted by the late Premier. Mr Seddon undertook to guarantee a subsidy of £20,000. This was considered all that was necessary. The enterprise was to be conducted apart from the State, save so far as the subsidy was concerned. But before Jong the all-embracing hand of Mr Seddon covered the whole concern, and without any special Parliamentary saucj tion (though Parliament subsequently I tacitly acquiesced by voting large i sums towards the affair) the j State gradually absorbed sole control and entire responsibility. To-day we find that the actual loss upon the show is set down at close upon i'SS.OOO, which loss has been made good by the Government. Whether this sum really covers fie entire deficiency it is impossible to say, as we have been accustomed to find statements of finance lacking in accuracy, and it frequently happens that long after a particular financial transaction has been forgotten odd votes crop up on the Estimates to cover < "oversights." It is not easy to esti- i mate the benefits which the Exhibition has conferred upon the dominion, 1 and therefore difficult to say whether ( "the game was worth the candle"; but it is certain that had the show ( been capably organised and managed 1 there would have been nothing like '

the heavy deficit now openly admitted, and possibly there would have been no loss. Ineptitude character- 1 ised the Government's control of the Exhibition. Bungling was an everyday occurrence. Exhibitors never knew what to expect, and their communications were often ignored or curtly replied to, sometimes after weeks had elapsed. Everything was "at sixes and sevens" from the inception to the close of the show. In addition to these drawbacks the Exhibition was practically unadvertised within and without the dominion. It is not too much to say that with proper advertising many thousands of persons who never saw the show would have been attracted to it. However, "what's done is done," and there is no remedy. The piper has been paid, and all that is left to us is to deplore the fatuity of: the Government in connection with so important an under- ! taking.