THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1908. A HUGE BUILDING SCHEME.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 3011, 7 October 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1908. A HUGE BUILDING SCHEME.

Public buildings are a necessity, but whether the expenditure advocated by the Government in that connection advisable is certainly open to doubt. When a large portion of the Parliamentary buildings were destroyed by fire, no one ever suspected that the big blaze was going to prove the signal for the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of pounds on public buildings in Wellington, including £14,000 for a Dominion Museum! It must not be supposed that we do not appreciate and recognise that museums, art galleries, botanical gardens, and other institutions of a faimibir character for the public benefit, are very nice and desirable things for the people to possess, but lavish expenditure upon such objects should only be made when the expenditure can be afforded. That is not the case today. The whole country is crying out for money. The Premier has himself hinted that if applications continued to pour in to the Advances

to Settlers Office as they have been doing for some time past, it might become necessary to refuse the granting of applications for a while. There is a strong probability that the revenue of the country for the current financial year will show a marked decrease. The wool market j —the market of chief importance to this country —is in a depressed condition. On every hand there is the cry born of earth hunger, while all over the country there is clamouring for railway construction to develop the natural resources of the country. Yet on top of a huge expenditure for Parliamentary and Departmental buildings, a further sum —a quite insignificant one, of course —of £14,000 for a Colonial Museum is proposed. The grand total is estimated as follows: —Parliament Building on Government House site, £IBO,OOO (the Premier says that it is proposed io limit the expenditure under this head to £150,000); Dominion Museum, £14,000; Departmental buildings on the Molesworth Street frontage, £20,000; Lew Government House, £25,000. The Premier believes that upon the basis of the value of the Government Building site, the cost of the whole scheme, even if it reached £300,000, which is not to be the case, will be repaid in twenty-five years. The Joint Committees' report has been adopted, although the Premier says that there is no need for precipitancy, and that there is sufficient time to submit the whole matter to the next Parliament. It is extremely probable that the Committee's estimate of the cost of the new buildings will be largely exceeded. Sir Joseph Ward, we will say, estimates the cost at £300,000. Mr Massey, who characterises the scheme as "the wildest and maddest scheme he has ever heard of in his Parliamentary experience," honestly believes that it will run into £500,000. Probably, if we split the difference — £4oo,ooo—we shall arrive at the huge amount that will be spent upon a few public buildings in this deot-burdeneJ country by a Government that claims to be democratic and desirous of promoting the real progress of the country.