WELLINGTON NOTES.

Waikato Argus, Volume V, Issue 313, 12 July 1898, Page 3

WELLINGTON NOTES.

[FROM OUE OWN CORRESPONDENT] THE LIBERAL MAJORITY.

The first division of the session whitewashed Ministers by a majority of six. It was a catch division, and it is claimed that had there been a full House it would have been 11. Some say 15. These estimates only show that the minds of some members are ill at ease. But there is no doubt about the majority itself. The question is—Can Mr Scddon keep his team in hand through the session. The probabilities all point to this, and to the Colony having to stew for auother year in socialistic juice. If any action of the Ministry during the recess was more illegitimate and more harmful to the country constituencies than another, it was the undertaking of a £40,000 job in the city of Wellington without the warrant of a Parliamentary vote. There are plenty of districts in the Colony where urgent works have had to remain urgent because Ministers had excused themselves behind the plea that no money had been voted. There are others for which sums were appropriated for necessary works, which have not yet been begun ; so that Capt. Russell's motion was a straight out invitation to country members especially to declare whether they were satisfied to have their constituents defrauded of their just rights in order that Ministers might dance to the fiddling of the Wellington Trades Unions. They have preferred to whitewash Mr Seddon. The reason is not far to seek. To him and his efforts at the last election they owe their seats, and the emoluments attached to them, and to him they look for a continuance of the, to them, pleasant and profitable condition of affairs. The producer pays for it all, and in many instances looks pleasant, ignoring the day of reckoniug not far distant. Before the session is over there will, undoubtedly, be more motions of no-confidence, but there is no subject on which a division can be taken iu which the respective claims of town versus country can so well be put to the test. Members who failed to see the injustice to their own people on this occasion will hardly vote for Mr Seddon's abandonment of bis position on the German syndicate, or Mr McKenzie'a on the Colonial Distributive Company. There was fright in the Ministerial camp for a short time over the division. There was no deep laid plan on the part of the Opposition. It was called for, so to say, on the spur of the moment. 'As a matter of fact there was one of the Opposition in the library at the time, who heard the bell and thought, like others of the Liberal party, that the bell was merely rung to " make a house " for Mr Buchanan. When Mr Seddon realised what was up, he rushed to the lobby bellowing for the whip to bring up the main body and reserves as well to save a defeat. For a time matters looked perilous, but the Premieral roar reached Bellamy's, and the professional habitues of that place of resort were brought into the chamber before the doors were closed, and so the country was saved. THE BANK OF NEW ZEALAND. The balance sheet of the Bank has been laid before the House, and it emphasises the contention so frequently and strenuously advanced by the Opposition members and press, that the Bank ought to have been left to its fate. What between interference by Ministers and the platform statements by Mr John McKenzie, coupled with the expensive and much criticised management, and the large annual charges on its earnings, the concern has a very dismal look about it. When the Seddon Ministry in its fright, wisdom, ignorance, or colossal gullibility came to the rescue of the wreck and, as they termed it, "saved the country from widespread disaster," the magnificent administrative powers of Seddon and Co., assisted by the experience of the discredited ex-officials of the Colonial Bank, combined with the gilt-edged business of the said hopeless concern, Parliament and the country were assured on the ''honour" of Messrs Seddon and Ward that the colony would never lose a shilling by the venturesome dive into the deeps of State banking. Mr Win. Watson provided a string of forecasts of profits and outgoings, and from his text Ministers preached the gospel of plunging. No one believed or affected to believe Watson's calculations. They were examined and dissected and diagnosed and eviscerated by people who understood the money-changing profession and pronounced bogus. Among the promised earnings was £14,000 a year paid to the Bank of England for inscription business. It was shown at the time that the great London Bank had a pull on this income, and that the Bank of New Zealand would never see a shilling of it, and so it has turned out. The Colonial Bank was to bring another £30,000 a year of profits. If it has done so, then the earnings of the Parent Bank have been clisproportionally small to the capital of the bank, But the Ministry of all the talents schooled by the gifted Watson had the ear of the democracy, then suffering more severely than now from a desire to nationalise everything, banks included, and New Zealand became the owner of the collection of all-sorts which had ruined the shareholders, Taking the extra profits to be made by usiug the two and a-half millions provided by the State, and the above-men-tioned trifles of extra earning power by absorption of the Colonial Bank and the £14,000 a year for inscription which never arrived, and estimating that a few more thousands could be squeezed out of the shareholders not yet reduced to beggary, these financiers alleged, and a majority in Parliament professed to believe them, that the extra earning power would be at least £135,000 per annum. For three years this would amount to £405,000, whereas the miserable actuality is £201,481, or less than half. For this year the profits are stated at £182,532, allocated as follows : Interest on two million guaranteed stock 80,000 Dividend on Government shares .. 17,500 Assets Board 74,000 Written off conversion account .. 10,132 Total £182,532 The first two sums are fixed payments. The Assets Board has the next pull at the profits of £50,000 a year to help it along until chut realisation, which is no nearer after three years, comes about. Last year the bank only had £30,391 of clear profits after paying the first t*o items, and so had to owe the rest and squared the debt this year. There is, therefore, no progress whatever being made towards paying off the five millions for which the colony is liable, and yet it is proposed to sink another IMO,00() in bricks and mortar in a new Wellington office. Even taking the statement as given, it is not the sort of documcut that one can come to any satisfactory conclusion about, tor the assets may be worth what they are set down at and may not. Among the 12J millions of assets tiierc are included 4] of " other advances and securities." It is generally believed that the term " gilt-edged " would be incorrect in this connection. That mysterious Colonial Distribution Company which pays Messrs John McKenzie and J. G. Ward £SOO a year each for the use of their names, is said to be chiefly Bank of New Zealand money. At any rate, Ministers have never denied assertions to that effect. Nor is anything said in the balance-sheet of provision made for bad or doubtful debts, although the mac in the street; can tell of instances not at all infrequent of the Bank beiug " let in." It, therefore, is patent that the State Bank is not such a good thiug as Ministers imagined it was three years ago. Mr John McKenzie, for one is tired of the toy and wants to sell or syndicate it. Whet her he is iu earnest

or not or whether his colleagues are of his wny of thinking is one of those mysteries provided tor us by administrators, who apparently change their minds as often as their socks. There are different opinions held as to what is the best course to pursue with the monster we have taken to our bosom. One thing is certain ; the colony will have to pay the piper, and this being so, the most sensible thing to do is to make the loss as light as possible. It is shown that the Bank is making over £70,000 even under the present disastrous conditions. If a syndicate is formed to buy it out, the syndicate, after the fashion of such concerns, will only invest with a view of making a good haul. All syndicates are built that way, and the Bank is so saturated with political influences that it is safe to assume that some would be political plunderers would be joined in the syndicate. But if the management were re-organised and business men substituted on the Directorate for Party men, and the brewery interests and the dead assets disposed of for what they would fetch, the Bank might, and probably would, pays its way or something near it, and the huge loss be evaded. But to sell or syndicate it as at present, would be simply idiotic.