JOKES AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1939, Page 6

JOKES AND RESPONSIBILITIES.

A VEIN of humour was tapped by the Finance Minister when he replied in the House of Representatives to demands tor a curtailment of the public works programme. Mr Nash said that it appeared to him that the best way to help in that direction was for every member to investigate the works in progress in his district and advise the Minister of Public Works of what could be curtailed or left undone. This is a very good joke of the pawky order, but an ability to jest does not relieve a Finance Minister, or a Government, of responsibility for the prudent and efficient control of public expenditure. Most certainly if does not relieve them of the duty of setting the narrowest possible limits to non-essential expenditure in time of war.

Even if not a single member of Parliament were prepared to urge that works in his district should be curtailed, it would none the less be the bounden duty of the Finance Minister and the Government io see to it that the swollen public works programme for the current year was cut down,,as far as that can bo done with’ the year half gone, and to see to it also that a very much more modest programme is prepared for next year. Failure to do these things would amount to a cynical sacrifice and subordination of national interest to political expediency. The Government’s duty in this matter is plainly defined and it must, be hoped tha.l it will do its duty. The fact that some sort of case can be made out for almost any work on ■which public money is being spent—there are instances, such as those of the South Island Main Trunk railway and many road improvement works in which the case is a very poor one—is neither hero nor there. The country is under a vitally and imperatively urgent necessity for 'the time being of curtailing expenditure where that can reasonably be done.

Tn the course of debate on this question, Mr Nash said that if any of the money voted was being paid out on wasteful work' it should bo stopped at once. It is the business of 11m Government al any time to see that, no public money is paid out on wasteful work but. the question now raised goes well beyond the prevention of waste. What has to be determined is whether expenditure that is not wasteful can, in existing' and prospective circumstances, be justified or afforded.